CIDER

Strawman

Overview

The development and establishment of CIDER will be effected through a process of community input (including 2 workshops planned in the summer of 2003 and funded by NSF/EAR) and a series of proposals to NSF.

We currently envision that the proposed institute would have minimum permanent staff, would be dedicated to providing a stimulating environment for a critical mass of participants in any given program, and would oversee/host the following activities:

• Advanced graduate courses:
  2-6 weeks
  Summer School at a level and scope beyond traditional graduate level. The kind of course we cannot teach at our individual institutions because of the insufficient pool of students and instructors. Open to graduate students and post-doc's (by application), as well as to more senior members of the community. The purpose would be twofold:
  • to train future scientists in different fields than their own specialty ( topics chosen for their multi-disciplinary interest)
  • to take a given field to a new level (disciplinary topics relevant to further the collective education of the corresponding community.
• Short Courses:
  1-2 days
  Open to undergraduate and graduate students, professionals.
• Workshops:
  Workshops might be geared towards proposal development (for example, feed CSEDI collaborations). Would provide overview of a field with focus on what is not known rather than the individual's latest research. A tiered approach is possible for a complete summer program, proposing sequentially:
  1. Introductory short course
  2. Advanced course
  3. Research workshop

The institute could provide a useful framework for community activities such as, for example, the on-going development of the new Reference Earth Model, or the development of modeling codes required in geodynamics or in theoretical mineral physics.

The scope of the institute may eventually be expanded beyond the "deep earth" focus.

In addition to the 2004 Summer Program at KITP, 3 upcoming summer programs have been funded by NSF/CSEDI. The first one will be held at KITP from July 17 to August 5, 2006. The next two will take place in the summer of 2007 and 2008, respectively.