👋 Hi, I’m Koutian (吴叩天)
I was a Ph.D. student at UT Austin, and I recently moved to the M.S. track (graduating Dec 2026) to devote myself to building interesting things.
Before that, I graduated from the School of Earth and Space Sciences at USTC (B.S. in Space Physics, Honors).
I love open-source projects, and I built many of them during my Ph.D. years. Benchmark Radar is the first project to track 20,710+ AI benchmark, eval, dataset, and data-quality records from 37 public sources, with linked evidence and daily updates.
I founded and grew USTC Xingyun Poetry Club from scratch to 1,300+ members.
I achieved the Finalist position for the USTC Guo Moruo Scholarship, the university’s highest honor, after initially ranking last in the college entrance exam.
I returned to Tsinghua University to deliver a lecture as the only undergraduate among 40+ scholars, three years after being rejected by the institution.
I am a contributor to Git, the version control system used by virtually every software project in the world.
I have a hamster named ASI, and I hope he lives to see Artificial Super Intelligence.
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I founded earth-space-ai.org to democratize Earth and space sciences modeling with AI, covering 8 domains from Earth-system models to heliophysics.
I earned the First Honor Graduate distinction at Shenzhen X-Institute, after starting as a research novice.
I published an SCI paper shortly after graduation, overcoming a starting point of minimal technical skills.
I contribute to open-source repositories totaling 100K+ stars (git/git, multica, ai-agent-book, AionUi, harbor) and made 10K+ GitHub contributions in the last year.
Media
All coverageUT Student’s Research Aims to Improve Climate Prediction
My land-surface modeling research, teaching, science communication, and UT01.
August 26, 2026
Using Eight Billion AI Personas for Psychology Research Has Its Ups and Downs
Coverage of MatrAIx, a study I coauthored, and its uses and limitations for psychology research.
August 26, 2026
From zero to one
Featured in the Overseas Edition’s coverage of innovation and education.
May 28, 2025
Breaking boundaries in education
Tsinghua University’s republication of the People’s Daily feature.
May 28, 2025
Growing the next generation of innovators
Coverage of Shenzhen X-Institute and its approach to nurturing research talent.
March 19, 2024
How satellites and AI protect the Texas coast
Satellites, artificial intelligence, and coastal water quality.
May 28, 2026
A young founder in Austin
Featured in Episode 1 of Gold Rush 2026. Watch from my appearance.
Gold Rush 2026
MatrAIx: a world of persona agents
Coverage of the population-scale simulation research I coauthored.
MatrAIx
ASI-Bench: research-grade challenges for AI
Coverage of the benchmark I coauthored: 60 tasks across 11 scientific domains.
ASI-Bench
Most Interested In
- Young founders with unusual agency
- Scientists who want to build, not just publish
- Educators designing systems, not courses
- People who treat their own life as a serious project
What I Build
- Research tools for land surface and Earth system modeling
- AI-native workflows for writing, coding, and research
- Communities that turn isolated talent into durable networks
- Founder-facing systems for learning, evaluation, and execution
Research Interests
- AI for Land Surface Modeling: explainable AI/ML for Noah-MP
- High Performance Computing: GPU and CPU clusters for geoscience simulations
- Model Optimization: Noah-MP, CTSM, and HRLDAS
Recent Work
I currently serve as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at UT Austin and Project Admin for NCAR/CISL Allocation Project UTAA0012, “Explainable AI for Improving Physics-Based Noah-MP Land Surface Modeling of Plant–Rock–Water Interactions.” The project has computational resources including 1,000 GPU hours on NSF NCAR Derecho-GPU and 20,000 CPU core-hours.
Recent Experience
- Received Tencent Hunyuan Qingyun Talent Program: AI Data & Evaluation Intern Offer (Aug. 2026)
- Graduate Teaching Assistant - UT Austin (Jan 2026 - Present; previously Aug 2024 - May 2025)
- Graduate Research Assistant - Jackson School of Geosciences, UT Austin (Aug 2025 - Dec 2025)
- Project Lead - NSF NCAR (Aug 2025 - Aug 2026)
- AI Agent Evaluation Engineer Intern - PineAI (Jul 2025)
- Full-Stack LLM Developer Intern - Beijing ZaiwenAI Technology Co., Ltd. (Jun 2025 - Jul 2025)
- Visiting Scholar - NSF NCAR (Jul 2023 - Dec 2023)
Education
M.S. Student in AI for Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, 2024 - Expected: Dec 2026 (transferred from the Ph.D. track) The University of Texas at Austin (Aug 2024 - Dec 2026) Focus: AI Eval x Model Optimization of Physics-based Land Surface Models (Noah-MP, CTSM, HRLDAS)
Bachelor of Science - BS (with Honors), Space Physics University of Science and Technology of China (Sep 2020 - Jul 2024) Founding President, USTC Student Xingyun Poetry Club (Currently 1,300+ members)
Contact
I’m always interested in discussing research collaborations, academic opportunities, and AI applications in geoscience. Feel free to reach out through the contact information provided in the sidebar.