About - Earthmover

Vision

We envision a world in which scientific data can be explored, visualized, analyzed, shared, and built-upon effortlessly.

Our cloud data platform will provide a foundation for people and organizations to create new scientific knowledge and data-driven products which will help humans thrive in sustainable harmony with each other and with our planet.

Our company will cultivate a healthy and inclusive work culture and become a key trusted partner to industry, government, and academia while contributing broadly to a multi-stakeholder open-source ecosystem.

Our story

Earthmover founders Ryan Abernathey and Joe Hamman began their journeys as climate scientists, each grappling with the challenges of working with massive scientific datasets.

As a professor at Columbia University, Ryan found himself analyzing petabytes of climate data, pushing against the limitations of existing tools and infrastructure. Meanwhile, Joe was encountering similar challenges in his work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and CarbonPlan. They both realized that the complexity and scale of climate science demanded better solutions than what was available. Rather than accept these limitations, they dove into the open-source community, contributing to projects that would help scientists work more effectively with large-scale data. It was through their shared commitment to open-source development that Ryan and Joe’s paths crossed.

They discovered they shared not only similar technical challenges but also a common vision: to build foundational data infrastructure that could accelerate scientific discovery and help address humanity’s most pressing challenges. This shared vision led to the creation of Earthmover.

We’re building on decades of combined experience in climate science and open-source development to create solutions that make scientific data more accessible, manageable, and actionable. Our mission goes beyond building better tools – we’re working to accelerate open science and empower researchers and organizations tackling humanity’s biggest challenges.

We incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) to ensure that the company always stays true to our mission.

Team

Ryan Abernathey

Co-founder & CEO

Ryan is an oceanographer and climate scientist who grew up in the mountains of Vermont. Ryan got his start in technology in college radio and the Indymedia scene during the early days of internet streaming. After earning a PhD from MIT, he spent a decade as professor at Columbia University, leading the Ocean Transport Group and working to unravel the mysteries of ocean circulation and turbulence. He resigned from tenure at Columbia to start Earthmover.

Joe Hamman

Co-founder & CTO

Joe is a climate scientist and civil engineer hailing from the Arizona desert. After a stint as a mountain guide on Denali, Joe launched a scientific career in hydroclimate modeling with a PhD from the University of Washington. After working as a scientist at NCAR, he co-founded CarbonPlan, an open-science climate research and policy think tank. He left CarbonPlan to start Earthmover to focus on the software and data infrastructure challenges at the core of climate science.