2026 July ESIP Meeting: Full Schedule

We are a home for Earth science data and computing professionals. Our sessions bring together the community for hands-on, interdisciplinary deep dives as we explore "Bridging Divides: Data, Technology, Community" this year. Learn more about this theme on the ESIP Meetings page.

Session and plenary recordings will be published on the ESIP YouTube Channel.

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7:30am CDT

Breakfast

Wednesday July 29, 2026 7:30am - 8:30am CDT

Tejas Dining Room

Registration & breakfast

Audience
All meeting attendees

Wednesday July 29, 2026 7:30am - 8:30am CDT
Tejas Dining Room

Meals & Breaks

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8:30am CDT

Build an MCP Server for AWS Open Data Using Vibe Coding with Kiro (Part 1)

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

In this hands-on workshop, participants learn how to build a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that can access the Registry of Open Data, using Vibe Coding with Kiro — with no manual coding required. Part 1 introduces MCP servers and the Registry of Open Data, demonstrates how conversations with Kiro become working code using vibe coding, and begins building tools to search and discover imagery and data. The workshop leverages features of the Registry of Open Data including searching by mission and by tags and fetching imagery. Part 2 (following session slot) continues building and applying the MCP server.

Audience
Data scientists, developers, data analysts, technical managers

Speakers

Chris Stoner

AWS Open Environmental and Geospatial Data Lead, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT
Location TBA

AI & Intelligent Systems

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8:30am CDT

Closing the ARCO Adoption Gap: Modernizing Data Analysis Workflows

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

Despite the growing availability of Analysis-Ready, Cloud-Optimized (ARCO) data, most of the Earth System Science community still relies on legacy download-and-analyze workflows. This session brings together data providers, software developers, and users to compare notes on what is actually moving the needle on adoption, with focus on interoperability across ARCO datasets from different providers. It also discusses the rapidly expanding role of LLM-assisted data discovery and analysis, including emerging tooling such as MCP servers. Through lightning talks, demonstrations, and guided discussion, the session will surface pain points and collaboratively draft a lightweight ARCO Adoption Notes document.

Audience
Open data providers (NASA, NOAA, DOE, NSF NCAR, USGS, university data centers); tool and cyberinfrastructure developers; Earth science researchers and domain scientists including graduate students and early-career researchers

Speakers

Harsha Hampapura

Scientist, NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research

Thomas Cram

Software Engineer, NCAR

Matt Fisher

Community Manager & Software Engineer, Schmidt Center for Data Science & Environment @ UC Berkeley

👋 I’m a Community Manager and Research Software Engineer at Schmidt Center for Data Science & Environment at UC Berkeley. I’m passionate about open source software, open science, and building culture and structure to help people feel safe and comfortable contributing to scientific... Read More →

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT
Location TBA

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

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8:30am CDT

Bridging Human Silos: Setting Up Data-Centric Communities of Practice to Reach Across Divides

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

The session organizers are building communities of practice around ICESat-2 datasets by convening disciplinary-related data user groups to share pain points and solutions. This session invites the ESIP community to share experiences with building or participating in similar CoPs to create guidance for replicating and sustaining these human connection spaces. Organizers will share lessons learned from ICESat-2 Inland Water and Forestry/Biomass/Canopy communities, covering how to find participants, what training attendees desire, and successes seen so far. The session then workshops best practices for a community of practice.

Audience
People who have a stake in how communities of practice are set up and conducted; those who want to build their own CoP around a specific discipline, mission, or topic

Speakers

Diane Fritz

Mikala Beig

Aimee Neeley

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT
Location TBA

Community, Education, & Capacity Building

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8:30am CDT

Federal Data Strategies: Successes and Opportunities for Bridging Divides

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

A continuation of sessions on Federal Data Strategies that started in 2023, this session is a venue for federal agencies to share opportunities for collaborations that will maximize the impact of investments in Earth science data resources. Federal agency representatives will address: emerging joint-agency opportunities in developing open data ecosystems; improving coordination among agencies in data management resource investments; innovative approaches to leverage existing Federal data investments to move from access to integration; and coordinating Federal agencies to facilitate benefits of artificial intelligence. Followed by discussion and audience input on the ESIP meeting theme.

Audience
Federal government data practitioners; ESIP program committee; connectors; users of federal data who want to understand how agency activities will influence data coordination and integration

Speakers

Raleigh Martin

Program Director, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)

Raleigh L. Martin is a Program Director in the Directorate for Geosciences (NSF) at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Raleigh’s portfolio includes programs related to open science, data management, and computing in the geosciences.

Leslie Hsu

physical scientist, U.S. Geological Survey

Coordinator of the USGS Community for Data Integration, Interim Director of the USGS Powell Center, and member of the USGS Science Data Management branch. https://github.com/hsu000001

Andrew Mitchell

Deputy Chief Science Data Officer, NASA

Deputy Chief Science Data Officer within NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) supporting the modernization of data and computing systems for science and engineering across NASA in support of efficiency, sustainability, security, and scientific integrity.

Charles Schmitt

Director, Office of Data Science, NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Jessica Morgan

NESDIS Assisstant Chief Data Officer, NOAA

Jessica is the Assistant Chief Data Officer (ACDO) of the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), a senior expert advisor on scientific data management, responsible for: managing the agency’s inventory of satellite data and archived data holdings... Read More →

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT
Location TBA

Data Stewardship, Governance, & Resilience

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8:30am CDT

Update on WMO Information System 2.0

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Information System 2.0 (WIS2) is the new data exchange backbone for 193 WMO Members across all WMO Earth system domains: weather, climate, hydrology, ocean, atmospheric composition, cryosphere, and space weather. WIS2 is built on a modern cloud-native technology stack using standards developed within OGC and WMO, providing discovery, access, and near real-time notification of data availability. This session brings together WIS2 and OGC API experts for an update and discussion covering WIS2 architecture, FOSS reference implementations, pilots and production rollout globally, and mechanisms for trusted organisations to publish data to WIS2.

Audience
Data producers interested in making their data available to the weather forecasting community; researchers and educators interested in accessing and using WIS2 data

Speakers

Ethan Davis

Software Engineer, NSF Unidata - UCAR

Steve Olson

Physical Scientist, NWS/STI/WIAD

I work for the National Weather Service (NWS) Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL). MDL conducts applied research and development for the improvement of diagnostic and prognostic weather information; data depiction and utilization; warning and forecast product preparation... Read More →

Jeremy Tandy

Principal Fellow - Technology, Met Office

Chris Little

IT Fellow, Met Office

Open Data, Interoperability Standards, Geo, Environmental ,Time, 4+D

Tom Kralidis

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT
Location TBA

Standards, Metadata, & Interoperability

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10:00am CDT

Break

Wednesday July 29, 2026 10:00am - 11:00am CDT

Rowling Hall Floor 3 Foyer

Break & socialize

Audience
All meeting attendees

Wednesday July 29, 2026 10:00am - 11:00am CDT
Rowling Hall Floor 3 Foyer

Meals & Breaks

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11:00am CDT

Build an MCP Server for AWS Open Data Using Vibe Coding with Kiro (Part 2)

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

Continuation of the hands-on MCP server workshop. Part 2 deepens the work begun in Part 1, expanding the MCP server's capabilities to search and discover imagery and data from the Registry of Open Data. Participants continue using Vibe Coding with Kiro to build tools that allow searching and discovering data without writing any code. The session concludes with applying the finished MCP server to datasets of participants' choosing. No manual coding required. Participants are encouraged to check out the Registry of Open Data in advance: https://registry.opendata.aws/

Audience
Data scientists, developers, data analysts, technical managers

Speakers

Chris Stoner

AWS Open Environmental and Geospatial Data Lead, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Location TBA

AI & Intelligent Systems

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11:00am CDT

Harmonizing Innovation and Preservation: Integrating Cloud-Native Formats into Open Earth Science Ecosystems

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

The federal government is accelerating data preservation efforts and is beginning to receive cloud-native formats for long-term preservation. Archivists and data management practitioners now face the challenge of preserving formats that are community-managed but not yet adopted by widely recognized authoritative bodies such as LOC or NARA. This session explores the policy gap and the need for agile governance frameworks on new cloud-optimized formats. Agencies will share how they have successfully adopted and implemented new cloud formats as part of cloud migration, covering advantages and disadvantages, governance policy, data access considerations, and documentation requirements.

Audience
Data management professionals, policy makers, developers, GIS analysts

Speakers

Nazila Merati

Physical Scientist, DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI

Data whisperer, CCO and firm believer in data night.

Physical Scientist who leads and coordinates data management planning and data stewardship for long-term data preservation.

Paul Lemieux

Data Archivist, NOAA / NESDIS / National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

Paul received his B.A. in Geography and M.S. in Information Science from the University of Tennessee in 2014 and 2016 respectively. He currently works as a Data Archivist for the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi... Read More →

Sarah O'Connor

Physical Scientist, NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI

Sarah Menassian

IT Specialist - Data Scientist, DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

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11:00am CDT

Building Technical Know-How Through Innovation Seed-Funding and Community

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

New projects bring new technical skill needs at every career stage. Through small projects, prototyping, and community input, programs like the ESIP Lab and the USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI) provide pathways for researchers to experiment with technology development in a low-stakes environment, gaining skills to leverage new data, tools, and AI technologies. This session brings together program managers, funded PIs, and other ESIP attendees to share lessons learned in building technical capacity. Goals include helping attendees understand how these programs differ from normal funded projects, presenting what leads to success, and gathering input on what would help attendees succeed.

Audience
USGS Community for Data Integration seed-funded project members; ESIP Lab members; anyone interested in learning more by applying for or using the products of these two programs

Speakers

Leslie Hsu

physical scientist, U.S. Geological Survey

Coordinator of the USGS Community for Data Integration, Interim Director of the USGS Powell Center, and member of the USGS Science Data Management branch. https://github.com/hsu000001

Aaron Friesz

Technical Community Manager, ESIP

Lauren Koenig

Data Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey

data pipelining, reproducible workflows, surface water quality, biogeochemistry

Coral Howe

Bojan Milinic

Chris Sherwood

Brandon Waters

Hazel Mebius

Mike O'Donnell

USGS

Sean Thiboldeaux

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Community, Education, & Capacity Building

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11:00am CDT

Facilitating Scientists' Learning While Stress Testing Open Science Principles via Openscapes

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

How do we meld open science principles to meet government agency requirements? By making space for open collaboration. This session explores melding and messiness, focusing on two stories: (1) NASA Openscapes Mentors' code-based tutorials and learning resources in the Earthdata Cloud Cookbook and how they could be better integrated into the NASA Earthdata unified website; (2) NOAA Fisheries Openscapes Mentors' efforts to secure and help govern shared cloud resources for staff across the agency. Themes include trustworthiness, AI-readiness, maintenance and time allocation for review, serving the community, and philosophical and technical questions.

Audience
Cross-agency folks of all expertise — technical, policy, and beyond — who can share experiences and help develop solutions and next steps

Speakers

Julia Lowndes

Director, Openscapes

Dr. Julia Stewart Lowndes is Openscapes founding director and co-leads NASA Openscapes and NOAA Fisheries Openscapes projects. I am a marine ecologist working at the intersection of actionable science, data science, and open science. My main focus is mentoring teams to develop technical... Read More →

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Data Stewardship, Governance, & Resilience

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11:00am CDT

Bridging the Divide Between Geospatial Data and Clinical Data with Standards

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

This discussion-focused session presents a first draft of a proposed metadata and provenance standard for linking geospatial and clinical data, capturing all metadata needed for clinical and public health applications. The facilitated discussion will probe the limits of the standard. The Geodata 4 Health cluster has desired outcomes designed to close gaps between those who collect data and those who use data, between scientific disciplines, to harmonize tools and resources, and to move toward true data integration. Organizers plan to work with session design support to maximize utility and impact.

Audience
ESIP and Geodata 4 Health cluster members; participants from NIH, NASA, NOAA, and USGS; ESIP clusters including Air Quality, Disaster Lifecycle, Data Readiness, Information Quality, and Wildfire

Speakers

Anne Thessen

Associate Professor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

I am passionate about data integration and semantic technology!

Nico Matentzoglou

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Standards, Metadata, & Interoperability

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12:30pm CDT

Lunch

Wednesday July 29, 2026 12:30pm - 2:00pm CDT

Tejas Dining Room

Lunch & networking

Audience
All meeting attendees

Wednesday July 29, 2026 12:30pm - 2:00pm CDT
Tejas Dining Room

Meals & Breaks

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2:00pm CDT

Bridging Discipline Divides: Applying AI to Curation (Part 1)

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

Metadata curation deals with many processes that can be substantially accelerated through AI, including selecting relevant terms from large controlled vocabularies, drafting descriptions, and extracting basic information from resources being described. This session brings together challenges, works in progress, and successes from several NASA sciences on incorporating AI techniques into curation workflows. Part 1 features presentations from all five NASA science areas — Heliophysics, Astrophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Biological and Physical Sciences — balanced with discussion for attendees to learn from others' work and collaboratively incorporate that progress into their own curation workflows for data, software, and other science resources.

Audience
ESIP Semantic Technologies Committee members; ESIP Data Stewardship and Machine Learning Cluster members; curators and data stewards in any science looking for new methods; repository managers seeking to streamline metadata workflows

Speakers

Rebecca Ringuette

Principal Open Science Scientist, Heliophysics Digital Resource Library at NASA Goddard

Heliophysics infrastructure (e.g. archives, data access/utilization), making resources (archives, software, notebooks, etc) more discoverable and open, more level citation (software and models in addition to data), how to make science reproducible and interactive, and current efforts... Read More →

Elisabeth Huffer

Information Systems Engineer, Lingua Logica

David Nilsen

Cogan Shimizu

Shawn Polson

Research Software Engineer, LASP

Shawn Polson is a software engineer who got his Masters in Computer Science from CU Boulder in 2020. He has worked at LASP since 2015. He is the Tech Lead of the Python in Heliophysics Community (PyHC) and works on the SUDA SDC for NASA's Europa Clipper. He also serves on LASP's AI... Read More →

Vandana Desai

Susan Mullally

Lynn Neakrase

Walter Alvarado

Kelly Lockhart

John Wu

Nick Susemiehl

Amanda Butler

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Location TBA

AI & Intelligent Systems

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2:00pm CDT

Help Us, Help Ourselves: Sharing Infrastructure Across Repository Networks

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

Open data repositories share a common core set of needs for computing and networking infrastructure. As repositories grow, there is an increasing trend to move 24x7 operational services from on-prem data centers to commercial cloud providers, often at significantly higher prices (redundant multi-site storage can be 10-30x higher than on-prem). In light of recent massive funding cuts, this Council of Data Facilities cluster session explores synergies and efficiencies gained when repository networks cooperatively provide mutual access to on-prem data center facilities. Case studies will focus on shared storage infrastructure, drawing on networks like OSDF and OSN. The session will develop a roadmap for a bottom-up community effort to help repositories help themselves.

Audience
Repository managers, technology developers, and open data facility users interested in sustainable, reliable, and accessible open data; academic and federal facilities

Speakers

Matt Jones

Director of Informatics R&D, University of California Santa Barbara

DataONE | Arctic Data Center | Open Science | Provenance and Semantics | Cyberinfrastructure

Nick Jarboe

Martin Seul

Technical Director, CUAHSI

Jeanette Clark

Research Software Engineer, NCEAS

Karen Stocks

Director, Geological Data Center, University of California San Diego

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

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2:00pm CDT

Bridging Divides and Getting to Yes

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

Good ideas do not become reality on their own. Bridging divides often requires bringing together different perspectives, aligning priorities, and overcoming what can feel like intractable inertia. Through personal stories and practical lessons, speakers will reflect on the often unseen work of building support, creating momentum, and getting from "maybe" to "yes."

Audience
Participants across all career stages and areas of expertise

Speakers

Julia Lowndes

Director, Openscapes

Eli Holmes

NMFS Open Science lead, NOAA Fisheries

I have been involved in training in statistics and ocean data computing for most of my career. I am currently lead of NMFS Open Science and in this role, I facilitate and run trainings in computing, data access and statistics for NOAA Fisheries. I am co-lead of the Inter-agency... Read More →

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Community, Education, & Capacity Building

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2:00pm CDT

Workshopping Earth Science Knowledge Rescue

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

Recent workforce disruptions and grant cancellations have separated hundreds of earth scientists from their research and institutions. While raw data may remain on servers, the vital undocumented context — methodological workarounds, interrupted longitudinal data, negative results — is at immediate risk of permanent loss. This interactive session workshops an Earth Science Knowledge Living Library framework operating on three levels: The Living Library (a dynamic accessible repository for sharing undocumented knowledge); The Knowledge Trust (a steward of intellectual property using Creator-Controlled Licensing); and The Seed Vault (a secure embargoed preservation space). Participants will validate licensing principles, map knowledge-at-risk scenarios, and identify pilot advisory board members.

Audience
Researchers whose work has been disrupted; anyone interested in knowledge preservation; broad relevance across the Earth science informatics community

Speakers

Steve Young

Senior business consultant, EPA (retired); Innovate Inc.

Steve is a retired 30+ year EPA employee. He specialized in information technology, management, and policy with a focus on leveraging new technologies to provide open, actionable information to the public. He also developed a sub- specialty in biodiversity informatics and played a... Read More →

Bruce Caron

Executive Director, New Media Studio

Bruce is a long-time advocate for open science. He is an active online-community architect, and is looking to help open-science organizations build community governance and achieve their promise. He recently published the Open Scientist Handbook . He is a co-founder of the EarthArXiv... Read More →

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Data Stewardship, Governance, & Resilience

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2:00pm CDT

Community Best Practices for Modern Model Workflows

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

This working session brings together perspectives from Earth system modeling centers approaching exascale-scale data archives to share, learn, and document best practices for rethinking and optimizing Earth science modeling architecture. NOAA GFDL presents their legacy architecture rewrite and current technical roadblocks, then facilitates breakout discussions across five topics: (1) Cloud-Native Execution and Portability; (2) Analysis-Ready Cloud-Optimized (ARCO) output and volume/transfer mitigation; (3) Unified Catalogs, Interactive Discovery, and Metadata; (4) Automated Analysis and Post-Processing Pipelines; (5) Impact and opportunities from the AI technological shift. The session concludes with synthesis and community-driven recommendations.

Audience
Research software engineers, data engineers, cloud architects, downstream application developers, data managers, metadata specialists, earth system modelers, and domain scientists

Speakers

Chris Blanton

Aparna Radhakrishnan

OAR NOAA GFDL

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Standards, Metadata, & Interoperability

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3:30pm CDT

Break

Wednesday July 29, 2026 3:30pm - 4:00pm CDT

Rowling Hall Floor 3 Foyer

Break & socialize

Audience
All meeting attendees

Wednesday July 29, 2026 3:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
Rowling Hall Floor 3 Foyer

Meals & Breaks

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4:00pm CDT

Enhancing Earth Science Data Stewardship with AI: Real-World Examples and Experiences (Part 2)

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

AI capabilities are developing tremendously quickly, creating opportunities for those supporting the research data enterprise to do their work in new or more efficient ways. But the rapid pace also creates divides: some people have access to the time, expertise, and resources to learn how to apply AI tools, while others do not. This session (Part 2 of the AI curation series) shares real-world experiences and lessons learned about how people are applying specific AI tools to the work of managing and making research data useful. Lightning talks followed by a roundtable discussion covering what is working well, what has been tried but is not ready for prime time, and key considerations and cautions.

Audience
Those with a success story or cautionary tale about applying AI to research data management; those who want to understand how AI might help address their own challenges and tasks

Speakers

Karen Stocks

Director, Geological Data Center, University of California San Diego

Leslie Hsu

physical scientist, U.S. Geological Survey

Coordinator of the USGS Community for Data Integration, Interim Director of the USGS Powell Center, and member of the USGS Science Data Management branch. https://github.com/hsu000001

David Blodgett

Civil Engineer, U.S. Geological Survey

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Location TBA

AI & Intelligent Systems

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4:00pm CDT

earthaccess: Five Years of Open Source Science Leadership at NASA

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

earthaccess is a powerful model for open-source tool sustainability and user-driven development: widely used not only because it solves real user problems, but because it has been intentionally developed openly and amplified via storytelling. This session shares several short stories and includes an open mic: what earthaccess is and its current impact; how the community works via hackdays (ESIP FUNding Friday followup!); open governance (JOSS publication, move to earthaccess-dev); current focus on virtualizing and AI-preparation; untold enabling stories; and an open mic for attendees to share their own earthaccess experiences and contributions.

Audience
Anyone who wants to become part of the earthaccess story, get involved as contributors (users are contributors!), or learn about the python library and open science infrastructure

Speakers

Julia Lowndes

Director, Openscapes

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

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4:00pm CDT

The Evolution of the Community Fellows Program: Piloting a New Vision for the Future

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

Since 2011, the ESIP Community Fellows Program has served as a gateway for early career researchers to connect with the Earth data science community. This session shares 15 years of program successes, including case studies of impactful work led by Community Fellows (30 minutes), then explores new opportunities for evolving the program based on recommendations compiled from a recent survey of the 2025 cohort of Fellows (60 minutes). The session invites anyone who wants to learn about what results in a successful collaboration, who has participated in the Fellows program as a student or mentor, or who wants to be involved in discussions on how best to support early career Earth science data professionals through ESIP.

Audience
Collaboration Area Chairs who have previously supported a Fellow; past Community Fellows; community members interested in mentorship opportunities

Speakers

Alycia Crall

Debasish Mishra

PhD Student, Texas A&M University

Joseph Lane

Graduate Student, University of Memphis

Kelsey Huelsman

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Community, Education, & Capacity Building

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4:00pm CDT

Main Results from RDA Repo2Pub Working Group: Do We Need to Update the COPDESS Commitment Statement?

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

This session has two parts. Part 1 reports on the nearly finalized RDA Repo2Pub Working Group, which conducted interviews with 8 publishers and 8 repositories to analyze pain points in the Research Publication workflow between publishers, domain repositories, and researchers — identifying cross-stakeholder dependencies and bottlenecks. Part 2 revisits the COPDESS Statement of Commitment (publicly launched January 2014, updated in 2017 with the FAIR data initiative). Since 2017, repository-publisher interactions have become more complex, AI is now integral to research, and there are many more players. The session assesses whether the Commitment Statement needs revision.

Audience
Researchers, repositories, data providers, publishers, and editors

Speakers

Lesley Wyborn

Data Strategist, Australian Research Data Commons

Kerstin Lehnert

Doherty Senior Research Scientist, Columbia University

Kerstin Lehnert is Doherty Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and Director of the Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance that operates EarthChem, the System for Earth Sample Registration, and the Astromaterials Data System. Kerstin... Read More →

Shelley Stall

Vice President, Open Science Leadership, American Geophysical Union

Shelley Stall is the Vice President of the American Geophysical Union’s Open Science Leadership Program. She works with AGU’s members, their organizations, and the broader research community to improve data and digital object practices with the ultimate goal of elevating how research... Read More →

Danie Kinkade

Information Systems Specialist / Director BCO-DMO, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Natalie Raia

Earth Science Cyberinfrastructure Research Principal, University of Arizona

Natalie Raia is a Earth Science Cyberinfrastructure Research Scientist in the College of Information Science at the University of Arizona. She collaborates with library and information scientists, systems engineers, researchers, publishers, and academic societies to develop and drive... Read More →

Matthew Warke

Bobby Saba

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Data Stewardship, Governance, & Resilience

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4:00pm CDT

Bridging Data Silos: Scaling Digital Resource Cards and Iterative Governance for Soil Data

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Location TBA

Sign-in & Notes

This session reviews and solicits feedback on digital resource cards that describe data holdings/repositories, APIs, semantic resources, and related organizations — specifically cards describing agents (organizations, labs, people), semantics (vocabularies, code lists, ontologies), data holdings and APIs, and publications. These cards capture what data are described by whom, who governs data and semantic resources, and how governance is communicated. Ongoing work from the Soil Ontology and Informatics Cluster, this session gathers feedback and incorporates it into future iterations. The session closes with a brief discussion on how the resources will be governed and maintained.

Audience
ESIP clusters or members of partner organizations who maintain semantic resources or knowledge bases of data holdings and repositories; participants interested in knowledge management and community co-production

Speakers

Cory Levinson

Kathe Todd-Brown

Assistant professor, University of Florida

I'm a computational biogeochemist who uses simulations to look at how soil breaths and links up data to support those models. I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida and co-chair the Soil Ontology and Informatics Cluster as well as the Operational Ethics Cluster at... Read More →

Brandon Whitehead

Graduate student, University of Florida

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Location TBA

Standards, Metadata, & Interoperability

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5:30pm CDT

Research Showcase Poster and Demo

Wednesday July 29, 2026 5:30pm - 7:30pm CDT

Zlotnik Ballroom (5,6)

Join us for an ESIP tradition - our Research Showcase Poster and Demo session! Learn more about your colleagues' work, showcase your latest efforts, ask questions, and make new connections.

Audience
All meeting attendees

Wednesday July 29, 2026 5:30pm - 7:30pm CDT
Zlotnik Ballroom (5,6)

General