ESIP News

Job Opportunity with ESIP: Executive Director
As announced in the FY19 Annual Report and at the 2020 Winter Meeting, Erin Robinson will be stepping down as Executive Director at the end of her 2nd term in October 2020 after 10 years as ESIP staff and over 15 years as part of the ESIP community. Learn more about the opportunity and access the full position description here.

2020 ESIP Summer Meeting: Call for Sessions OPEN NOW through 4/17
The session proposal portal for the 2020 ESIP Summer Meeting (July 14th-17th, 2020 in Burlington, Vermont) is open now through 4/17. For over 20 years, ESIP meetings have brought together the most innovative thinkers and leaders around Earth observation data, thus forming a community dedicated to making Earth observations more discoverable, accessible and useful to researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and the public. For this meeting, we especially welcome session proposals related to ESIP's 2020 theme: Putting Data to Work: Building Public-Private Partnerships to Increase Resilience & Enhance the Socioeconomic Value of Data. Sessions that discuss technical examples of how data can be put to work to address science use cases are strongly encouraged. Sessions are generally 1.5 hour blocks and can follow a number of different formats. Learn more and submit a proposal by 4/17 here. Questions? Send them to staff@esipfed.org.

Volunteer to be a Data Expert for the Virtual Data Help Desk (by 4/15)
Volunteer to be a Data Expert for the next Virtual Data Help Desk, to be hosted during the week of EGU2020: Sharing Geoscience Online (May 4th-May 8th, 2020). Just like the in-person events, this Virtual Data Help Desk, which is a program of EGU, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), will connect researchers with informatics experts familiar with their scientific domain to share skills and techniques that will help further research and make data and software open and FAIR. YOU can volunteer to be a Data Expert who contributes in one or both of the following ways:

1. Answer Data Questions Virtually (monitor question forums, likely Twitter and Slack, and answer where you can during the week of May 4th)
2. Share a short recorded demo of a tool or resource (existing resources are great, no need to create something new unless you want to!)

To volunteer, please complete this form by April 15th.

Next IT&I Tech Dive: Unidata Science Gateway (4/9 at 3 pm ET)
Join the next IT&I Tech Dive this Thursday at 3 pm ET to hear from Julien Chastang on the Unidata Science Gateway. With the goal of better serving our community, Unidata is investigating how its technologies can best make use of cloud computing. The observation that science students and professionals are spending too much time distracted by software that is difficult to access, install, and use, motivates Unidata’s investigation. In addition, cloud computing can tackle a class of problems that cannot be approached by traditional, local computing methods because of its ability to scale and its capacity to store large quantities of data. Cloud computing accelerates scientific workflows, discoveries, and collaborations by reducing research and data friction. We aim to improve “time to science” with the NSF-funded Jetstream cloud. We describe a Unidata science gateway on Jetstream. With the aid of open-source cloud computing projects such as OpenStack, Docker, and JupyterHub, we deploy a variety of scientific computing resources on Jetstream for our scientific community. These systems can be leveraged with data-proximate Jupyter notebooks, and remote visualization clients such as the Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) and AWIPS CAVE. This gateway will enable students and scientists to spend less time managing their software and more time doing science. More info and connection info can be found here.

Mark Your Calendars for the ESIP Collaboration Area Highlights Webinar (4/22 at 3 pm ET)
ESIP is home to 30+ vibrant and diverse community-driven collaboration areas focused on Earth science data challenges and opportunities. Join us on Wednesday 4/22 at 3 pm ET to see many of ESIP's clusters and committees give fast-paced lightning presentations about their recent activities and how to get involved. This webinar aims to broaden awareness of ESIP collaboration area activities, increase communication and collaboration between existing collaboration areas, and invite new participants to join. The 2019 Collaboration Area Highlights Webinar drew a large crowd and helped to forge many new connections. More details on the upcoming event will be made available here.

ESIP Cloud Computing Cluster Survey 
The ESIP Cloud Computing Cluster is looking for those with knowledge on Cloud Data Optimization to take a short survey. This survey will help the group to build a knowledge base about the current state of the art and emerging needs. If you're interested to keep up with the work of the Cloud Computing Cluster, please consider joining their mailing list.

ESIP Semantic Technologies Committee Earth and Planetary Knowledge Semantics Initiative
This ESIP Semantic Technologies Committee is in the initial planning stages for a new initiative aimed at organizing a semantic knowledge space, information architecture and software infrastructure for Earth and planetary knowledge semantics. This effort has the potential to directly influence and benefit adoption of future knowledge-driven systems and, because ideas are just now taking shape, this represents a significant opportunity for you to help guide development. If you are interested, please join this Slack Channel and join the regular calls on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 4pm ET 
Join: https://www.gotomeeting.com/join/976796333
You can also dial in by phone: +1 (872) 240-3212 (Access Code: 976-796-333)


More News

Making Innovative Use of NASA Satellite Data to Address Environmental, Economic, and/or Societal Impacts of COVID-19
NASA's Earth Science Division would like to call the attention of the Earth Science research, applications, and data systems communities to Program Element A.28 "Rapid Response and Novel Research in Earth Science" (RRNES) of Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) 2020 as an opportunity to propose investigations making innovative use of NASA satellite data to address regional-to-global environmental, economic, and/or societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Potential proposals may address R&A-related topics more fundamental in underlying physical and/or biological sciences (including possible connections to socioeconomic activities) and/or ASP-related topics characterizing impacts of decisions or efforts to inform decision makers on regional-to-global levels in their responses to mitigate the impacts of the disease. While proposed studies must use NASA satellite data and information products as a primary source of information and research tools, they may also utilize remote sensing data and products from government agencies, international, or commercial sources.  Studies utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques including Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) are encouraged. For any questions about this opportunity, please contact Dr. Laura Lorenzoni of ESD at (202) 358-0917 or by Email at laura.lorenzoni@nasa.gov.

2020 EarthCube Annual Meeting Goes Virtual & Abstract Submission Extended to 4/15
The 2020 EarthCube Annual Meeting will be an entirely virtual event held during the week of June 15th. To allow for additional posters, notebooks and presentations, the new deadline for abstracts is April 15th. Project participants, new PIs, early career researchers and scientists, and all other interested parties are invited to submit abstracts. Learn more here.

Gateways 2020 Call for Participation (Tutorials due Apr. 28; other formats due May 11)
Call for Participation: Gateways 2020 (October 19–21, Bethesda, Maryland) is now accepting submissions of short papers, demos, panels, tutorials, and workshops on the topic of gateways for science, engineering, or other disciplines. Popular topics include:
Gateway design, use, impact, development processes, sustainability, or best practices
Educational topics (tutorials, demos) directed toward the next generation of gateway creators as well as gateways used for education; Any other aspect interesting to fellow gateway creators or users, such as emerging capabilities, approaches or technologies; and Learning Labs (impromptu group discussions and gatherings) will also be welcoming early submissions as well as on-site proposed topics. See more details including submission deadlines here.

NCEAS Training on Reproducible Research Techniques for Synthesis
Registration is open for a new intensive, five-day immersion course “Reproducible Research Techniques for Synthesis” (8/17-8/21 in Santa Barbara, CA). The course, which will happen quarterly, will enable environmental researchers across career stages and sectors to gain fundamental data science skills in support of open, reproducible research techniques. Major course foci will include managing data to enable better reuse, building reproducible workflows using R and git, and communicating results within the framework of synthesis science. This is an opportunity for students, researchers, data managers, and others to reinforce or expand their learning and become familiar with current best practices and tools in data science and open science. These skills will enable you to maximize your productivity, share your data effectively, and accelerate the scientific community’s ability to work together on solving important questions about the natural environment and our interactions with it. Learn more and apply by 7/20 here.

Arctic Data Center Data Science Training
The Arctic Data Center will host a 5-day data science training workshop October 19 - 23, 2020 at NCEAS in Santa Barbara, California. This 5-day workshop will provide researchers with an overview of data management practices, data science tools, and concrete steps and methods for more easily documenting and uploading their data to the Arctic Data Center. Both early career and established researchers from the Arctic research community are encouraged to apply. Participants will be selected on the basis of their current research or work activities; their previous experience with open science practices, data management techniques, and analysis methods; and their current or former opportunities to access training in these areas. We will prioritize applications from individuals currently funded through the NSF Polar Programs. Participants will receive support to cover the cost of airfare and accommodations for the duration of the course. See more info and apply by 4/24 here. For questions, contact training@arcticdata.io.