IBM Research Europe

Information

Institution description

IBM Research Europe is a cornerstone of IBM’s global research organization and is consistently ranked among the world’s most influential industrial research institutions. Spanning multiple laboratories across Europe, it is renowned for fundamental breakthroughs and real‑world impact in AI, quantum computing, climate science, materials discovery, and trustworthy digital systems. IBM Research has a long-standing record of leadership in high‑performance computing, foundational AI models, and the translation of advanced research into deployed technologies at a global scale. Its scientific excellence is underscored by two Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded for groundbreaking work at IBM Research Zurich—achievements that fundamentally shaped modern nanotechnology and materials science.

Building on this legacy, IBM Research Europe is now a recognized leader in AI for Earth observation and climate science. The organization has taken a central leadership role in developing large‑scale deep learning foundation models for space agencies, including ESA and NASA, redefining how satellite data is analyzed at a planetary scale. Major achievements include Prithvi, developed in close collaboration with NASA as one of the world’s first open foundation models for geospatial data, and TerraMind, a state‑of‑the‑art multimodal Earth system model advancing performance across land, ocean, and atmospheric intelligence.

Through these efforts, IBM Research Europe has helped define the modern paradigm of foundation models for Earth science, enabling faster scientific discovery, more accurate climate impact assessments, and scalable AI solutions for global sustainability challenges—reinforcing its position at the forefront of scientific and technological innovation.

Technical Officer Bio

I am Johannes Jakubik, a Research Scientist within the AI for Climate Impact team at IBM Research Europe. In my role, I lead projects in multimodal generative modeling, such as TerraMind, and co-lead IBM Research's activities in deep learning for planetary observations. I especially focus on pretraining and scaling multimodal deep learning models in collaboration with ESA and NASA, and within the EU Horizon program. In addition, I'm co-leading work at the intersection of deep learning and quantum graph optimization. My work on deep learning for planetary observations and weather modeling has been awarded the NASA Agency Group Award, the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Honor Award, several IBM accomplishment awards, and was featured in international and national media. As part of my work, I am fortunate enough to co-supervise several exceptionally bright Ph.D. students at ETH Zurich.

Project

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