When we talk about foundation models, what are we talking about? This is a reflection piece on foundation models by drawing an analogy from numerical solutions in fluid dynamics.

This paper explore the challenges in building these models for science and engineering and introduce a promising framework called the Data-Driven Finite Element Method (DD-FEM), which aims to bridge traditional numerical methods with modern AI to provide a rigorous foundation for this exciting new field.

Choi, Y., Cheung, S. W., Kim, Y., Tsai, P. H., Diaz, A. N., Zanardi, I., ... & Heinkenschloss, M. (2025). Defining Foundation Models for Computational Science: A Call for Clarity and Rigor. arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.22904.

IBM recently released the first-of-its-kind geospatial intelligence any-to-any model TerraMind. In this podcast, we feature this new generative model and learn its capability of multi-modality. I believe there is a lot of potential with such a model.

Jakubik, J., Yang, F., Blumenstiel, B., Scheurer, E., Sedona, R., Maurogiovanni, S., Bosmans, J., Dionelis, N., Marsocci, V., Kopp, N., Ramachandran, R., Fraccaro, P., Brunschwiler, T., Cavallaro, G., & Longépé, N. (2025). TerraMind: Large-Scale Generative Multimodality for Earth Observation. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.11171

Today, we are featuring a geospatial foundation model Prithvi, produced by NASA and IBM, one of the first foundation model in this space.

Trained on a large global dataset of NASA’s Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 data, Prithvi-EO-2.0 demonstrates significant improvements over its predecessor by incorporating temporal and location embeddings. Through extensive benchmarking using GEO-Bench, it outperforms other prominent GFMs across various remote sensing tasks and resolutions, highlighting its versatility. Furthermore, the model has been successfully applied to real-world downstream tasks led by subject matter experts in areas such as disaster response, land use and crop mapping, and ecosystem dynamics monitoring, showcasing its practical utility. Emphasising a Trusted Open Science approach, Prithvi-EO-2.0 is made available on Hugging Face and IBM TerraTorch to facilitate community adoption and customization, aiming to overcome limitations of previous GFMs related to multi-temporality, validation, and ease of use for non-AI experts.