Quantum physicist and engineer Andrey Sushko shares how his team at WindBorne Systems is closing critical gaps in global atmospheric data with long-duration balloons and AI-driven analysis. Driven by a passion for challenging assumptions and stretching the limits of what's physically possible, Andrey reveals how creative engineering and smarter data are transforming the science of predicting our planet’s most complex systems. Andrey Sushko, PhD, is a hands-on engineer with a physics background who sees his career as identifying what the laws of physics allow, and then finding the right arrangement of matter to achieve that end. His passion, though, is finding where the 'letter' of said laws diverges from common interpretations of their 'spirit', and then exploiting those loopholes to push the boundary of what is possible.While completing an experimental physics PhD at Harvard as a Hertz Fellow, Andrey returned to a project he had started as a Stanford undergrad, co-founding WindBorne Systems to tackle weather forecasting by filling the global atmospheric data gap with long-duration balloons. As CTO at WindBorne, his overall focus remains consistent: taking exciting ideas from the realm of physical possibility into reality by building an exceptional team and doing a lot of weird engineering. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx