Last week saw the fifth annual ICCS Summer School – and what a week it was.
More than 70 people – including representatives of the members of the Virtual Earth Sciences Institute (VESRI), PhD and postdoc students, ICCS summer interns and staff – attended the 5-day event at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge.
Providing training and supporting the climate science community are vital parts of ICCS’s mission, and the Summer School is its flagship event.
From punch cards to machine learning
The 2026 Summer School began in style, with an informative and entertaining keynote address from Professor Steve Easterbrook (Director, School of the Environment, and Professor, Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto). Titled Computing the Climate: The past and future of global climate modelling, Steve’s talk set out how far both computing and climate science have come since their infancy, and looked ahead to future challenges in the field.
Participants enjoyed a packed programme of workshops on topics including Research Software Engineer (RSE) skills, GenAI for software engineering, introductions to Git and GitHub, Dash and High Performance Computing, mini projects and green software engineering practices. For the first time, we were delighted to welcome colleagues from the Virtual Institute for Scientific Software (VISS) teams at Johns Hopkins University and University of Washington to deliver some sessions.
Finding solutions together
The learning opportunities didn’t end with the sit-down sessions in the lecture theatres. Coffee breaks and lunchtimes were filled with enthusiastic discussions between participants, who could also book ‘code clinics’ with ICCS’s RSE team to find solutions to climate science conundrums.
Feedback from Summer School attendees has been excellent. One commented: “The ICCS Summer School was nothing short of an incredible learning experience. I was continually astonished by the level of detail, care and consideration with which the RSEs led their sessions.
“The ICCS RSE team might just be the most casually spectacular group of people I may have come across – their humility, patience and earnest efforts set a great example for software engineers and computer scientists, especially in the role they play in helping bridge computational and climate science.
“I walk away from ICCS more learned and inspired – so thank you for all your effort!”
Another attendee said: “I think the best parts for me were the discussions – having the coffee breaks to chat led me to some very interesting discussions that are going to directly apply to my work. Being able to interact with people so in tune with computation was really wonderful and incredibly helpful.”
New connections, future collaborations
Professor Dominic Orchard, ICCS Co-director (computer science), said: "It was a joy to see how engaged all of our participants were with the courses, the exercises and mini projects, and to see so many fruitful conversations going on between the participants and the ICCS team throughout the week, both casually and in code clinics.
"I'm incredibly proud of all the hard work the ICCS team has put into delivering another successful Summer School."
An evening poster session provided opportunities for attendees to make new connections, with seeds sown for future collaborations and a lot of keen dialogue. The winning poster was created and presented by Martin Moreno Delgado, with the runners-up prize going to Sambit Kumar Panda. The week ended on a strong note with a thought-provoking AI, climate and ethics panel session.
Participants were also able to make the most of their visit to Cambridge with social events including drinks and formal dinner at Sidney Sussex College, a guided walking tour, and a trip to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.
ICCS hopes to be able to run another Summer School in 2027. So that you don’t miss out, please join our mailing list to ensure you hear about future events.