ESPIn

ESPIn

The Earth Surface Processes Institute

The Earth Surface Processes Institute (ESPIn) is a week-long immersive training experience for 25 early career scientists, including graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, researchers, and faculty. ESPIn is designed to help participants advance their research in earth and planetary surface processes by teaching skills in numerical modeling; in modern, collaborative, scientific software development; and in the use of open source community cyberinfrastructure. A mix of experienced scientists, visiting faculty, and research software engineers provide instruction.

ESPIn is a combination of learning and doing.

ESPIn 2025: learning and doing!

ESPIn uses the CSDMS Ivy course material, with topics including:

• Project Jupyter
• Introduction to the Shell
• Text Editors and Development Environments
• Python Distributions and Package Management
• Virtual Environments
• Introduction to Version Control with Git and GitHub
• Python for Modeling
• Landlab
• CSDMS Data Components
• The Basic Model Interface
• The Permamodel Toolkit
• The Python Modeling Tool (pymt)
• Best Practices in Scientific Software Development

ESPIn kicks off with a big ideas, mini poster session: participants create a poster from two sheets of paper, one with research interests, the other with personal interests. This session helps participants introduce themselves and find shared interests.

ESPIn isn't just about instruction. Daily time blocks are dedicated to working in small, self-organized teams on a research, data analysis, and coding project. Participants can also work on developing and advancing their own research. Get a taste of past ESPIn team projects by checking out their webinars and labs.

ESPIn includes dedicated time for peer-to-peer networking, and professional development, including a career panel.

ESPIn concludes with team project presentations, which set up participants to continue to develop ideas.

For questions regarding ESPIn, please contact us at csdms@colorado.edu.

ESPIn 2026

CSDMS is excited to announce that ESPIn 2026 will be held August 3-7 at the Sustainability, Energy and Environment Community (SEEC) facility on the CU Boulder East Campus.

Important Dates

• December 8: Application window opens
• January 24: Application window closes
• February 14: Notifications
• August 3-7: ESPIn 2026

Application

To apply for ESPIn 2026, please fill out this Google Form (opens December 8, closes January 24).

For your application, please prepare one PDF document containing the following sections:

1. Motivation statement (250 words max). Why are you interested in studying earth surface processes? What research questions are you working on? What experience do you have in numerical modeling? What programming languages and development tools do you use? What do you want to learn?
2. Resume (half a page max). Be sure to list any experience in programming and model development.

Applications will be evaluated on a 7-point scale based on:

• scientific motivation, relevance of research interests/goals to the CSDMS community, disciplinary background, and career stage (4 pts);
• programming experience and motivation to improve skills (2 pts);

Travel Support

For all ESPIn participants, CSDMS will provide:

• Shared lodging in Boulder, arriving on August 2 and departing on August 8
• Breakfast and lunch on each teaching day (dinners are not provided)
• Reimbursement of travel-related costs, including airfare, bus, shuttle, rideshare, mileage, and parking (but not including rental car costs) for up to $600 for U.S.-based participants, and up to $1200 for international participants

The ESPin Team

Lead:

• Prof. Irina Overeem

Project Coordinator:

• Lynn McCready

Instructors:

• Dr. Tian Gan
• Prof. Nicole Gasparini
• Dr. Ethan Pierce
• Dr. Mark Piper
• Dr. Matt Rossi

Mentors:

• Dr. Tian Gan
• Dr. Ethan Pierce
• Jocelyn Reahl
• Dr. Yuval Shmilovitz

If you have any questions, please contact us at csdms@colorado.edu.