Early Registration

Member: $100
Non-Member: $125
Student: $25
K-12 Teacher: $35

Location

Registration

Meeting Information

This 3-day collaborative and hands-on event will bring together researchers, educators, policy makers, indigenous and philosophical knowledge holders, and other curious minds to explore solutions to society’s greatest challenges through interdisciplinary lenses and convergence science approaches. Through the theme “Our Changing Planet”, we have the following goals:

Promote deeper understanding of convergence science processes
Empower new cross-disciplinary collaborations to advance earth-space-data convergence
Connect with current and future NEREID members to better understand and provide effective platforms, services, and information resources

The "Our Changing Planet" Summit will serve as a space for participants to forge unanticipated new connections and collaborations while envisioning challenges and projects that can only be tackled by working outside of conventional disciplinary structures. Participants will leave the Summit with an enhanced perspective on our changing planet, how other planets beyond Earth can help us better understand the planet we call home, and how a deeper understanding of planet Earth can advance our knowledge of planets in our solar system and beyond. In addition, participants will explore specific and innovative ideas on convergent solutions to big questions and challenges (i.e. climate change, water/food shortages, potential space-related catastrophes, etc.), and new connections for authentic collaborations outside of and on the fringes of various disciplines.

Location

Associated Universities, Inc.
2650 Park Tower Drive

Floor 7
Vienna, VA 22180

The NEREID Summit will be hosted at AUI's office in Vienna, Virginia just outside of Washington DC. It has easy access to both DC airports and is next door to the metro station (Dunn Loring-Merrifield stop on the Orange Line). It is conveniently located near several restaurants and hotels.

Presentations

Interested in sharing your own research or topic of interest? A limited number of "Lightning Talk" presentations will be included in Summit activities. Lightning Talks will be 7 minutes with 3 minutes for questions and transition.
Lightning Talks are Closed. Deadline Extended to May 10th!

Registration

Full Meeting Rates - Early Registration

Member: $100

Non-Member: $125

Student: $25

K-12 Teacher: $35

On-site registrations will be available, but rates will be doubled.

Virtual Attendance Limited - Our Changing Planet will require significant in-person interaction to support emerging conversations. Due to the nature of the Summit program, it is NOT possible to accommodate full participation virtually. However, we will offer free virtual participation in the Keynote Panel Discussion to all NEREID Members. Invitations to join a Zoom webinar will be emailed to members approximately 48 hours before the event. If you are not yet a member, please review the Benefits of NEREID and consider joining us. Membership is free and applying takes a few minutes.

Summit Assistance and Scholarship Opportunities

NEREID strives to be an inclusive organization that elevates the work and amplifies the voices of all members. If the registration fees, travel costs, or dependent care costs pose a barrier, we encourage members to apply for one or more of the following opportunities:

Summit Registration Waiver
Travel and Lodging Stipend
Dependent Care Stipend

Requests will be evaluated based on need. A limited pool of funding is available for these opportunities.

Applications were due by April 12th, 5:00pm US Eastern time and are now closed.

Lodging

There is no sponsored hotel for this event but there are many nearby. Below are two suggested hotels. Participants must make their own lodging accommodations.

0.3 miles

Courtyard by Marriott Dunn Loring Fairfax
2722 Gallows Rd
Vienna, VA 22180

0.8 miles
Homewood Suites by Hilton Falls Church
8130 Porter Road
Falls Church, Virginia 22042

Sponsoring the Summit

If you are interested in promoting your business and supporting summit activities, please review our Summit Sponsor Guide and then complete our Summit Sponsor form. Thank you for supporting convergence with NEREID!

COVID-19 Policy

The health and safety of our community participants is our highest priority. Our goal is to hold a safe event and although we recognize that we cannot remove all risks, we are committed to providing a safe environment for our meeting attendees.

NEREID requires all participants be fully vaccinated and will require proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test within 48 hours of the first Summit day. Masks will be available to all participants and we encourage mask-wearing indoors. We will closely monitor and follow local guidance on masking. If transmission rates are high at the time of the Summit, masking may be required.

This policy will follow the CDC recommendations and guidelines, which can be found HERE. Any changes in this policy will be communicated to registered attendees via email.

Community Participation Guidelines

Please review NEREID's Community Participation Guidelines which serves as our code of conduct for the NEREID Summit.

Questions? Contact us

Location

Registration

Lodging

Sponsor

Keynote Panel Speakers

Speakes

David Grinspoon

David H. Grinspoon is Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and was the former inaugural Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology for 2012-2013.

His research focuses on comparative planetology, with a focus on climate evolution on Earth-like planets and implications for habitability. He has also studied, written and lectured on the human influence on Earth, as seen in cosmic perspective.

He has published four books, Venus Revealed, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize, Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, which won the 2004 PEN literary award for nonfiction, Earth in Human Hands, which was named one of NPR's Science Friday "Best Science Books of 2016" and Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto, co-authored with Alan Stern. He is adjunct professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Science at the University of Colorado.

Nirav Merchant

Nirav Merchant is the Co-PI for NSF CyVerse a national scale Cyberinfrastructure for life sciences and NSF Jetstream the first user-friendly, scalable cloud environment for NSF XSEDE. He leads the cyberinfrastructure team for the NSF & USDA funded National Artificial Intelligence Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA)

He received his undergraduate degree in Industrial engineering from the University of Pune, India, and graduate degree in Systems and Industrial Engineering from the University of Arizona (1994).

Over the last two decades his research has been directed towards developing scalable computational platforms for supporting open science and open innovation, with emphasis on improving research productivity for geographically distributed interdisciplinary teams.

His interests include data science literacy, large-scale data management platforms, data delivery technologies, managed sensor and mobile platforms for health interventions, workforce development, and project based learning.

Martin Ogle

Martin Ogle received a B.S. degree in wildlife Biology from Colorado State University and an M.S. in Wildlife Science at Virginia Tech. He was Chief Naturalist for the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority, 1985 - 2012. After retiring from the No. Va. Regional Park Authority in 2012, Martin and his family moved to Louisville, CO where he started Entrepreneurial Earth, LLC. Through this he started and still runs the education program for Lafayette Open Space and gives talks and workshops for a variety of clients.

For over 35 years, Martin has been a proponent of and educator on Gaia Theory / the science and metaphor of Earth as a single living system. He organized a major conference on Gaia Theory at George Mason University in 2006. In 2010, Martin was awarded the Krupsaw Award for Non-Traditional Teaching by the Washington Academy of Sciences for outstanding teaching in informal and non-academic settings. In 2012, Martin received the Arlington Green Patriot Award for outstanding work in sustainability (given by George Mason Univ., Arlington Chamber of Commerce, Arlington Dept. of Environmental Services, & Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment.) Martin was born and raised in South Korea.

Gretchen Stahlman

Gretchen Stahlman is an Assistant Professor of Library & Information Science at Rutgers University. Gretchen earned her Ph.D. degree from the University of Arizona School of Information in 2020. Her current research interests broadly include scholarly and science communication, scientific information lifecycles, and the sociotechnical systems supporting research infrastructures, resources, and data management. The overall purpose of Gretchen's present and future work is to inform open science and scholarly communication initiatives, as well as development of methods, services, and infrastructures for long-term information management and responsible data science. With more than 10 years of prior professional experience related to librarianship and information management, she has also worked in an academic library, and as a documentation specialist for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope construction project.