A sea change in weather forecasting
Salient brings together world-leading experts in physical oceanography, climatology and the global water cycle, machine learning, and business growth to create the new standard in subseasonal-to-seasonal weather forecasting. Our core technology evolved from decades of research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and MIT. Today, we’re harnessing that ability to help enterprise customers stay prepared, become more resilient, and make informed business decisions.
An idea worth its salt
Salient began with a simple, yet revolutionary idea: Could salinity in the ocean be a natural predictor of rainfall?
After studying 1993’s severe flooding in the U.S. Midwest, Woods Hole scientist Ray Schmitt theorized that supplying those floods required a large region of the ocean to lose significant water to evaporation. Over the next decade, Ray and his team tested and refined this theory. In 2016, he teamed with his sons Eric and Stephen—engineers with an interest in machine learning—to enter the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s S2S Forecast Rodeo. Their model stunned everyone, outperforming all other entries, including several of the world’s foremost forecasting companies, and laid the foundation for Salient Predictions.
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Our mission
Salient puts scientific knowledge to work to help people and organizations better understand and prepare for the increasing volatility of climate change. Armed with more accurate and longer-range forecasts, we help mitigate risk, improve preparedness, increase resilience—and provide insights that will help people adapt to the realities of climate change and, we hope, improve society’s current trajectory.
Team
- Head of Global Business Development at Jupiter Intelligence
- Founder and CEO of multiple software startup businesses
- GE Software and GE Capital executive
- 40-year career in physical oceanography research and technology
- Scientist Emeritus, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee
- >100 refereed publications, >10k citations, h-index 48
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- Head of Product & Growth, ClimateAI
- VP Product & Strategy, Ceres Imaging
- Co-founder Stanford Alumni in Food & Agriculture
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- Head of Product at multiple enterprise software companies with successful exits
- 25+ year track record of building award-winning products
- Expertise in bringing AI to business users at companies such as FirstFuel, Oracle, and Lattice Engines
- Scaled startups and led teams from incubation to exit/Series B
- Architected software to value >6GW of renewable energy risk
- NREL JISEA award for wind integration model
- MIT MS MechE & Sloan business
- 15+ years sustainability experience
- Operations lead at three impact-driven startups
- McGill BA First-Class Honours, UNC-Chapel Hill Urban Livability Fellow
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- Ph.D. Climate and Ocean Science, MIT/WHOI Joint Program
- NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow (NESSF)
- Expert in the global water cycle and its shifts with climate changes
- 20+ years experience supporting commercial Earth, weather and ocean sciences
- Experienced data management team lead building innovative geospatial products
- BS, Penn State, MS Brown University
- 1st place in both temperature categories, USBR Sub-seasonal Forecast Rodeo
- MS in Water Resources Engineering & Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from UW-Madison
- NSF Graduate Research Fellow focusing on seasonal predictability and mechanisms for moisture transport
- 5+ years of experience in probabilistic modeling with physics simulators
- Expertise in applied Bayesian statistics and computational statistics
- BS and MS in Physics, PhD candidate in Astrophysics (University of St Andrews, UK)
- 6+ years experience building out React enterprise applications across multiple industries
- Experienced team lead and software consultant
- BS of Computer Science and MCS, Illinois Tech
- 3+ years working with Fortune 500 companies on climate and renewable energy targets
- Lead glacier guide on Exit Glacier educating people on glaciology and the impacts of climate change
- B.S., Environmental Policy from Colorado College
- 25+ years of experience in renewable energy and climate
- Experienced founder and co-founder in multiple climate-focused technology companies
- BS and MS in Atmospheric Sciences with focus on numerical weather prediction, computational hydrology, and climate risk.
- B.S. in Meteorology & B.S. in Risk Management, Penn State University
- Catastrophe modeling & risk management experience at Guy Carpenter & Synchrony Financial
- 8+ years in seasonal weather forecasting & snow removal consulting
- Ph.D. in Oceanography, Columbia University
- Expertise in simulating the ocean and atmosphere, with both statistical and physics-based models
- Experienced developer of commercial weather and geospatial analytics pipelines
- 6+ years of experience developing data science solutions across a wide range of industries
- Expertise in low-data domains (self-supervised & unsupervised learning)
- B.S., Biology from University of Washington (Seattle)
- Join a mission-driven community
- Curious, candid, collaborative candidates encouraged
- Browse available roles and apply
Advisors
- Multiple-time founder and C-level executive
- Founder and CTO, Camiant
- CMO, Tekelec
- Founder and CEO, Aquto
- President and Director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2015-2020
- Dean and Professor, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, 1988-2015.
- National Science Board, 2006-2012
- President, Oceanography Society, 2013-2014
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- Chief Scientist, Saildrone, 2019-2021
- Physical Oceanography Program Manager, NASA, 1997-2019
- Co-Chair, Interagency Ocean Observation Committee, 2010-2019
- Chair of Ocean Observation Panel for Climate, World Meteorological Organization, 2009-2013
- Assistant Professor of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, Penn State University
- PhD in Climate Dynamics, Duke University
- Applying Bayesian statistical inference, climate modeling, and machine learning techniques to assess the predictability of the climate system.
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- Director of Earth Information Programs at SilverLining
- Co-founder SK-Analytics (sub-seasonal disease forecasting)
- CTO Submarine, ocean carbon sequestration
- Head of Research, Fabric RQ (2019-2022)
- Associate Director of Earth System Prediction, Jupiter Intelligence (2017-2019)
- Research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (2005-2017)
- Associate Professor, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma
- Climate dynamicist focused on weather - climate interface
- PhD, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Improving sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasts of temperature and precipitation; enhancing our understanding of decadal-scale projections of climate/climate trends.
- M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Tufts University
- Winner of USBR Sub-Seasonal Climate Forecast Rodeo
- Senior Engineer at Veryst Engineering
- Lead Engineer at Neil Brown Ocean Sensors
- USBR Climate Forecast Rodeo Winner
- B.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University
- 10+ years software engineering experience
- Expert in cloud computing and containerization
Investors
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We are always looking for bright, collaborative, self-motivated, and outcomes-oriented individuals to join our team. Explore our open positions and apply today!
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