Winner of the Lorentz-eScience Competition 2022 Announced
14 Sep 2021 - 4 min
‘Boosting (sub) seasonal forecasts with Explainable AI’
The proposal on ‘Boosting (sub) seasonal forecasts with Explainable AI’ is the winner of the Lorentz-eScience competition 2021-2022.
Earlier this year, the Netherlands eScience Center and the Lorentz Center invited researchers to join the Lorentz-eScience Competition 2022 and to apply for a leading-edge workshop on explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) for science that will happen in the next year.

The winning proposal is: ‘Boosting (sub) seasonal forecasts with Explainable AI’
by
- Dim Coumou, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
- Maurice Schmeits, Royal Netherlands Meterological Institute (KNMI)
- Daniella Domeissen, ETH Zurich
- Jakob Runge, DLR Institute of Data Science
- Michael Scheuerer, Norwegian Computing Centre
Aim
The aim of this workshop is to unite climate scientists, data scientists, seasonal-forecast experts and XAI experts to improve sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) predictions of heatwaves and droughts.
“Relevant and practical”
The field of competing plans were very strong, and the following quote of the evaluation committee exemplifies the motivation of the choice:
“Scientifically relevant but also practical, by means of concrete case studies; explicitly includes the eScience Center and its experts.”
Venue and contact
We look forward to co-hosting this intriguing and challenging workshop next year at the Lorentz Center. The workshop will be held from 5 to 9 September 2022, at the Snellius venue in Leiden, The Netherlands.
Quotes
“The Lorentz-eScience Competition is the perfect opportunity for teamwork in the perfect setting, where climate researchers and eScience Center experts work together in this award-winning workshop to help ‘boost (sub) seasonal forecasts with explainable AI’. On behalf of the eScience Center, I would like to thank the Lorentz Center and all applicants for their continued partnership and interest in this annual competition.”
– Prof. dr. Joris van Eiijnatten, CEO at the Netherlands eScience Center
“By focusing on explainable AI visualizations that on the one hand provide a thorough understanding of the sources of variability in seasonal weather forecasts and on the other hand are designed with software sustainability and long-term community-based research collaborations in mind, the winning team constitutes a prime example of how the Lorentz Center and the Netherlands eScience Center together can help advance researchers in the Netherlands.”
– Dr. Frank Seinstra, Program Director at the Netherlands eScience Center
“Congratulations to the winning workshop proposal! This workshop would be the perfect real-world workbench for our current project, the Deep Insight and Neural Networks Analysis (DIANNA), which aims to bring the advances in XAI to scientists. We look forward to seeing the outcomes of this workshop and its realized benefits for the larger community.”
– Dr. Elena Ranguelova, Technology Lead for AI at the Netherlands eScience Center
The Netherlands eScience Center and the Lorentz Center thank all applicants who took the time to submit their proposal. For more information about the Lorentz-eScience Competition and to stay connected about future opportunities, please visit www.lorentzcenter.nl/lorentz-escience-competition.html.
Founded in 2012 as an independent foundation by NWO and SURF, the Netherlands eScience Center is the Dutch national centre for innovative software solutions in academic research. At the eScience Center, we offer many opportunities for collaboration from our calls for proposals, to trainings and workshops, and events. Be sure to stay tuned for the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.