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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8:30am CDT

Closing the ARCO Adoption Gap: Modernizing Data Analysis Workflows

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

Comal

Collaborative 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.

Speakers
1. What drives ARCO adoption? Lessons from NSF NCAR's GDEX, Speaker: Harsha Hampapura
2. Beautiful, Barrier-Free Visualization as an Incentive for ARCO Adoption, Speaker: Elizabeth Holmes
3. From Files to Analysis: Chunking, Virtualization, and ARCO-like Access Patterns in the Cloud, Speaker: Luis Lopez

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

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 →

Luis Lopez

Research Software Engineer, NSIDC

Luis Lopez is a Research Software Engineer at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. He is a passionate advocate of open science and has contributed to open source projects such as Apache Nutch, PyLDAVis, earthaccess and virtualizarr.

Thomas Cram

Software Engineer, NCAR

Harsha Hampapura

Scientist, NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research

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

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

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

Comal

Collaborative 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

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 →

Hailiang Zhang

Software engineer, NASA GSFC

Sarah O'Connor

Physical Scientist, NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI

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.

Sarah Menassian

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

Doug Schuster

Interim Director, Computational and Information Systems Lab, NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research

David Blodgett

Civil Engineer, U.S. Geological Survey

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

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

2:00pm CDT

Help Us, Help Ourselves: Sharing Infrastructure Across Repository Networks

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

Comal

Collaborative 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

Vishu Nandigam

San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego

Martin Seul

Lead of Software Engineering (Acting), CUAHSI

Nick Jarboe

Program Manager, Jarboe Enterprises

EarthRef.org, MagIC paleomagnetic data repository, and the FIESTA data repository software stack.

Jennifer Schopf

Science Liaison, Leadership Class Computing Facility, University of Texas at Austin / TACC

Dr. Jennifer M. Schopf, Science Liaison for the LCCF, has been a member of the TACC leadership team since 2022. In her previous role at Indiana University, she built the team that ensured international data sharing was fast and effective for a broad range of major facility partnerships... Read More →

Jeanette Clark

Research Software Engineer, NCEAS

Matt Jones

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

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

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

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

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

Comal

Collaborative 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

Software Consultant / Soils and Biogeochemistry MSc, UC Davis

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 →