Weather Man: Alumnus leads company using AI for better forecasting and more

Most people look at their weather app to know if it’s raining or snowing, so being caught off guard can be a pain. Picking activities and outfits can seem impossible: How likely is a storm while I’m out running this afternoon? What activities should we do in Cancun next week? Can my kids go to school tomorrow in summer clothes?

Thanks to Nana Banerjee, PhD ’96, and the team at Pelmorex, the company’s newest app — Your Weather Assistant — could make these challenges a thing of the past.

“If it’s connected to climate or weather in any way, we have an answer,” Banerjee says. “Your Weather Assistant is designed to be the one-stop shop and comprehensive repository of climate information, fully integrated into a proprietary ensemble of Large Language Models, enabling magically useful responses with the power of artificial intelligence. We were the first to use generative AI to do that — no one has caught up yet — and we’re already working on the next generation to make it more valuable and interesting for our users.”

As president and CEO of the weather and data analytics company, Banerjee believes climate is the driver of human industry and activity, influencing everything from the goods people buy and use to their daily schedules. To fill that market need, Your Weather Assistant goes beyond the local forecast of temperature and precipitation to provide personalized wardrobe suggestions, travel recommendations and historical climate information both online and in a handy smartphone app.

An alumnus of Watson College’s systems science program, Banerjee previously led McGraw Hill as CEO, where he felt a responsibility to use his knowledge to make education accessible for learners across the world. At other points in his career, he was a senior advisor to Cerberus Capital Management, served as chairman of Comscore, and was group president and officer at Verisk.

Recently, he launched the Peggy Slavik Summer Student Internship and Professor Jim Geer Summer Scholarship to give back to the Binghamton University community. Now, he has brought that same dedication to Pelmorex.

Established in 1989, Pelmorex Corp. serves clients around the world. The company also operates the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, the backbone of Canada’s public alerting system, delivering potentially life- saving alerts such as active shooter notifications, extreme weather events and AMBER alerts.

“We have a very simple, humble mission: to keep people safe and informed. I think we’re succeeding,” Banerjee says. “Between our alerting business and our focus on technology that makes weather local and gives people personalized, contextualized and customized reports, these technologies allow us to help people, both responsibly and ethically.”

With the motto “Your Weather When It Really Matters,” Pelmorex looks ahead to a world increasingly influenced by climate change and aims to excel at telling the story before, during and after extreme weather events. Through its reconstruction to a more AI-centered company, Pelmorex focuses on built-in privacy measures while also providing users with the most tailored predictions it can offer.

“Using our app is like having a super- smart, informed best friend who has nothing to do during the day except look out for you and keep you safe preemptively,” says Alex Leslie, Pelmorex’s chief technology officer. “When you need to know something, it’ll surface and let you know — a little tap on the shoulder saying, ‘You might want to adjust your plans.’”

Banerjee and his team continue to improve their AI program every day. Their proprietary historical weather data, algorithms and predictions meld naturally with a generative AI program in a way that other companies cannot replicate. As Pelmorex continues to evolve in the climate space, Banerjee returns to its core mission: to protect, educate and serve people.

“There’s so much more to be done in the climate education space. Most folks are unsure how to prepare themselves for the major shifts that climate change is bringing,” he says. “It’s the role of companies like us to predict, prevent, mitigate and support an appropriate response. We’re only in the first half of the first inning when it comes to climate-based concerns.”