AI + Environment Summit
Wed. September 30th, 2026
A full-day summit to inspire, ignite and innovate work in AI for the environment
The AI + Environment Summit brings together researchers, industry leaders, and policymakers to explore how artificial intelligence can drive positive environmental change. From cutting-edge research to real-world applications, the summit offers inspiring talks, panel discussions, and networking opportunities. Don’t miss the chance to be part of the conversation shaping the future of AI for a sustainable planet!
Event Schedule
8:30
Arrival & Welcome coffee
9:15
Introduction by the Organizing Committee
9:30
Keynote Talk: Dr. Stefano Mintchev (former ETH Zurich)
10:15
Keynote Talk: Prof. Pierre Gentine (Columbia University)
11:00
Coffee break
11:30
Parallel Sessions: Weather & Climate | Drones
13:00
Lunch
14:30
Afternoon Session: AI Hype or Real Impact?
15:30
Coffee break
16:00
Poster session & Startup booths
17:00
Apero
Robots Searching for Life Beyond Sight, Sound, and Reach
Dr. Stefano Mintchev is a roboticist working at the interface between robotics, and environmental science. His research focuses on robust, scalable, and bioinspired robotic technologies that can access complex natural environments and collect environmental information beyond the limits of human observation. He earned his Ph.D. in Bioinspired Robotics from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy in 2014, followed by postdoctoral research at EPFL on bioinspired aerial robots. In 2018, he co-founded Foldaway Haptics and served as CTO until 2020. He later joined ETH Zurich as Assistant Professor of Environmental Robotics, a position he held until December 2025.
Lost (and Found) in Latent Land
How latent spaces can improve our prediction and understanding of weather and climate
Prof. Pierre Gentine is a professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics at Columbia Engineering since 2010. He received numerous prices and early career awards, including the NASA, DOE, and NSF Early Career Awards, as well as the American Geophysical Union Macelwane medal. His recent work spans improving the representation of clouds in climate models, improving simulations with measurement data (data assimilation), and differentiable solvers for fluid dynamics. He is also co-founder of Celest.Science.
AI for Weather and Climate Modeling
Modeling Earth’s weather and climate remains one of the grand challenges in science. It is a problem that spans scales from local thunderstorms to global ocean currents, from tomorrow’s forecast to projections centuries ahead. Getting this right has never been more urgent: our ability to anticipate, adapt to, and act on a changing climate depends on it. AI is now making a significant impact on this field. From AI weather forecasting that rivals traditional numerical models to efficient climate model components that enhance long-range projections, the pace of progress has been remarkable.
Join us to explore this exciting area: What can AI models already deliver? Which open problems remain? And what does it take to build weather and climate models we can trust?
Drone Applications for Environmental Monitoring and Conservation
nmanned aerial systems are rapidly becoming a cornerstone technology in environmental science, offering scalable, high-resolution, and cost-effective methods for observing and understanding complex ecological systems. This session explores the state of the art and emerging frontiers of drone-based environmental applications, spanning biodiversity conservation, ecosystem monitoring, and environmental impact assessment. The discussion will focus on three interconnected themes:
AI Hype or Real Impact? The Future of AI+Environment
As AI advances rapidly—with foundation models, multimodal systems, and generative AI reshaping both research and real-world applications—we want to explore what these developments mean for fields at the intersection of AI and the environment. Environmental challenges such as climate forecasting, biodiversity monitoring, and conservation decision-making place distinct demands on AI: limited and biased data, multimodal sensing, uncertainty estimation, interpretability, models that generalize appropriately while remaining reliable under local conditions, and reliable deployment under urgent real-world constraints.
This panel will explore a key question: How are current AI trends changing application-driven research in environmental fields—and are they accelerating real impact, or pulling attention away from what these domains actually need? We will bring together diverse perspectives on where AI is genuinely transformative, where the hype exceeds the utility, and what the next generation of environmentally relevant AI should look like.
Registration
Registrations to the AI + Environment summit 2026 are open now! The ticket includes:
Students: 10 CHF
Full access to the summit
Supported by our sponsors
Regular: 50 CHF
Full access to the summit
In case you need an invitation letter, please send a request including proof of purchase to contact@aiesummit.com. If your visa application is not accepted, we will refund your ticket.
Call for Posters
Please fill in the details about your poster below. The deadline for poster submission is August 1st. Confirmation on accepted posters will be sent by August 25th.
Impressions from the 2025 summit
You can find recordings of most talks on Youtube! The links are available in the session descriptions above, next to the speakers’ name.
Also take a look at the 2024 edition!
Venue — Innovation Park Zürich
Innovationspark Zürich
Wangenstrasse 68
8600 Duebendorf
Contact
If you would like to receive information about the AI + Environment Summit 2026, you can register using the form below. Do not hesitate to contact us at contact@aiesummit.com for any questions.
Organizers
Ghjulia Sialelli
PhD fellow at ETH AI Center
Samantha Biegel
PhD fellow at ETH AI Center
Sarah Tariq
Research Assistant at D-GESS, ETH
Emilia Arens
PhD Ecovision Lab at UZH
Robin Zbinden
PhD student at EPFL
Dr. Christina Humer
Postdoctoral fellow at ETH AI Center
Dr. Fanny Lehmann
Postdoctoral fellow at ETH AI Center
Johannes Dollinger
PhD Ecovision Lab at UZH
Dr. Dana Grund
PostDoc at ETH
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (IAC)
Paulina Körner
Data Scientist at SDSC
Dr. Joel Oskarsson
Postdoctoral fellow at ETH AI Center
Nina van Tiel
PhD student at EPFL
Steffen Knoblauch
PostDoc at the University of Heidelberg
Dr. Huiying Zhang
PostDoc at ETH
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (IAC)
