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CUAHSI e-Newsletter November 2026

Posted Nov 12, 2026

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LETTER FROM THE CEO

Jordan Read, CEO, CUAHSI

This is a sneaky-busy time of year. Today we kick off our first-ever Water Science Exchange with partners at the University of Missouri, and staff are preparing for a large presence at the AGU Fall Meeting (see below for more details). I know you are busy too, balancing growing demands on your time and looking toward a restful stretch that always seems just around the corner but routinely gives way to surprise priorities.

CUAHSI builds community capacity for water science, which is paradoxically becoming easier and harder in this increasingly digital and rapidly changing science environment. It is easier to reach people but harder to build and keep authentic connections. Those connections are what matter most for moving the field forward. CUAHSI is 25 this year, and its most valuable work has come from people in this community connecting with each other. Make time for that this season, and not just with CUAHSI staff. Catch up with a colleague you haven’t talked to in a while. At AGU, introduce yourself to someone outside your field. Please do the same where you live.

CUAHSI NEWS & EVENTS

Join CUAHSI at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting Dec 7-11 in San Francisco. Visit us at booth #636 to talk with staff about CUAHSI programs and tell us how we can better support your work. Visit our website for the most up-to-date information on our AGU activities.

Save the date for these CUAHSI events at AGU:

CUAHSI Town Hall: CUAHSI Turns 25: Shaping the Future of Water Science Infrastructure and Education
Date: Dec 9
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm PT
Location: MC, Room 2007 - West

CUAHSI Community Gathering
Join us for appetizers, games, and the presentation of this year’s CUAHSI Community Awards. Connect with CUAHSI staff and other water science community members, and hear brief updates on where CUAHSI is headed. Please RSVP to reserve your spot. Space is limited, but all community members are welcome as capacity allows.
Date: Dec 9
Time: 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm PT
Location: Underdogs Cantina, 128 King Street, San Francisco, CA

Teach water science? Join us for lunch at AGU, with up to $500 in travel support.

Join CUAHSI staff for a one-hour lunch session at AGU. Bring your questions and learn about two ways we can support your teaching:

  • Use free HydroLearn modules, online lessons built and shared by faculty, in your own courses.
  • Teach beyond your campus. Learn how teaching a CUAHSI Virtual University (CVU) course can widen your department’s course offerings without adding to your teaching load.

Lunch will be provided. Instructors who attend and complete a post-event survey are eligible for up to $500 in travel support, reimbursed after the event.

Date: Dec 10
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm PT

Submit your interest. Space and travel support are limited. To attend, complete the interest form with a short note on why you want to come. We’ll review submissions on a rolling basis starting Nov 23 and send invitations by Dec 2. Later submissions will be reviewed as timing and capacity allow. Priority goes to instructors new to HydroLearn or CVU and to instructors from institutions new to these programs.

Not going to AGU but interested in getting involved or have questions first? Contact Julia Masterman at email hidden; JavaScript is required.

Applications open for 2027 Water Prediction Innovators Summer Institute Theme Leaders and Student Fellows

Program dates: June 7 - July 21, 2027

The Water Prediction Innovators Summer Institute is a seven week training program for graduate students on operational water prediction hosted by CUAHSI and the University of Alabama and supported by the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH).

Research Theme Leader Applications
Theme Leaders set the big-picture research theme for student project teams and guide them through their projects. Each Theme Leader supports (or co-supports) 1-3 project teams of 2-4 students.

Theme Leader Application Deadline: Application review will begin on a rolling basis on Dec 1. After this date, applications will continue to be accepted through Dec 16 or until a sufficient number of applications are received. Applicants are encouraged to apply by Dec 1 for full consideration.
Learn more and apply here.

Graduate Student Fellow Applications
Graduate Student Fellows work in teams with peers from across the country on water prediction research, building professional skills and a national network along the way. Open to current and incoming M.S. and Ph.D. students enrolled in U.S. universities.

Student Fellow Application Deadline: Jan 12, 2027. Learn more and apply here.

Water Prediction Innovators Summer Institute Impact and Overview Webinar with the NOAA-NWS Office of Water Prediction and Program Organizers

Date: Dec 3
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm ET

Join researchers from the NOAA-NWS Office of Water Prediction to learn about their work on national-scale water prediction and their perspectives on the history and impact of the Summer Institute Program. Then stick around to learn how you can join the program that has trained the next generation of water scientists for over a decade. Organizers of the Water Prediction Innovators Summer Institute will give an overview of the program structure and application process, and will be available to answer your questions. Student Fellow applications for the 2027 Summer Institute close Jan 12, 2027, so don’t miss this chance to talk with the program team.

Register for the webinar

Summer Institute Gathering at AGU

Summer Institute alumni, and students and Theme Leaders interested in participating in 2027 are invited to a gathering on Dec 9, 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm PT, at Underdogs Cantina, following the CUAHSI Community Gathering. RSVP here.

Questions? Contact Julia Masterman at email hidden; JavaScript is required.

HydroLearn Module Reviewers (part-time)

CUAHSI is hiring two part-time reviewers for HydroLearn, an open-source platform for interactive hydrology and water resources learning content. Reviewers will work through modules, catalog their topics and skills, and help shape new modules. Especially suited to undergraduate and graduate students in hydrology-related fields.

Schedule: 5-35 hours per week through Mar 30, 2027, with potential for extension
Pay: $15 to $20 per hour, depending on location and educational background in hydrology
Reports to: Courtney Di Vittorio, Education Scholar
Eligibility: Open only to applicants in AL, CA, CO, FL, MA, MI, NH, NY, NC, PA, UT, VT, VA, or WI
Apply by: Nov 30

Read the full job description and apply

2026 Navigating Academic Waters Cyberseminar Series

This year's Navigating Academic Waters series, developed by the AGU Hydrology Section Student Subcommittee, will help early career water scientists build the skills to advance their careers, with sessions on storytelling, the federal job market, and building networks across academia, industry, and beyond.

Join us Nov 19 at 1:00 pm ET for the final presentation in the series:
The Connected Researcher - Building Networks That Bridge Academia, Industry, and Beyond

Speakers include:

  • Dan Myers, Environmental Quality Analyst at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy
  • Mohamed Abdelkader, Assistant Research Scientist, Iowa Flood Center, University of Iowa
  • Heather Golden, Research Physical Scientist, US Environmental Protection Agency
  • Marie Kurz, Group Leader & Senior Staff Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Recordings of the earlier sessions are available online: The Scientist Behind the Science: The Power of Storytelling in Academic and Professional Spaces, and Navigating Today’s Federal Job Market

Visit the website for more details.

Register for the Cyberseminar

The CUAHSI Water Learning Commons is a free, open collection of water science teaching materials made by and for the community: full courses, code notebooks, and workshop activities you can use or adapt. It is built so instructors can reuse each other’s materials and authors get credit and can see how their work is used.

The current collection of materials includes JP Gannon's Hydroinformatics course, Mark Bakker and Vincent Post's Analytical Groundwater Modeling course, Keira Johnson's introductory hydrology workshop using an interactive app called HydroViz, and several CUAHSI-curated notebooks containing reusable workflows with open water data.

Everything is openly licensed, and resources hosted directly on the platform are archived and citable via HydroShare. In the coming months we’ll add field protocols, reproducible workflow examples, and real-world impact stories.

Browse the Water Learning Commons

Share your teaching materials. If you’ve built courseware, field protocols, notebooks, or other teaching materials others could use, we’d like to host them and help you reach more people. You keep ownership and can keep working where you already do. Authors also receive an Authorship Impact Report showing how the community uses their materials, useful for planning revisions and for CVs or annual reviews.

To add your materials or learn more, email email hidden; JavaScript is required with a link and a short description.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The AGU Hydrology Section Student Subcommittee (H3S) is accepting applications for 2027-2028 members. Members build their hydrology network, plan events for student and early career scientists, and organize AGU sessions and cyberseminars. Past events and blog posts are on the H3S website. Current members will be at the CUAHSI booth (#636) at AGU if you have questions.

Apply here to join H3S.


CUAHSI Joins New Partnership to Expand Near-Surface Geophysics Support

Near-surface geophysics methods have broad applicability in a variety of geoscience and environmental disciplines such as hydrology, critical zone science, and engineering geology. Until now, though, there has not been a unified center to support research and education in near-surface geophysics. Five NSF-funded Earth science organizations involved in aspects of near-surface geophysics have entered a new partnership to centralize support; these organizations are the Center for Transformative Environmental Monitoring Programs(CTEMPs), Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI), the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), OpenTopography, and the NSF National Geophysical Facility (NSF NGF operated by EarthScope).

The first activity taken together was the Near-surface Geophysics Community Input Workshop, bringing together a broad cross-section of the geoscience and near-surface geophysics community. Developed with input from the AGU Near-surface Geophysics Section and held in late August 2026 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the workshop, attended by CUAHSI staff Jordan Read, CEO, and Julia Masterman, Community Relations and Training Coordinator, aimed to fortify relationships, surface new collaborations, and build on prior community input.

Ninety-four attendees, ranging from academic faculty, researchers, and late-stage graduate students to industry professionals and federal employees, were tasked with assessing gaps, identifying complementary efforts, and considering how to coordinate opportunities among the partner organizations and the broader research and education communities. Across a day and a half of plenary talks and interactive breakout sessions, attendees identified high priority actions to increase collective impact.

A synthesis of workshop outcomes is now available, which drew from the community input to create a set of prioritized capabilities for partner organizations to follow. In the near term, the organizations will implement the partnership and virtual center governance structure and create an online landing page for sharing resources. Thereafter, the partners plan to work together to sponsor more community events, acquire additional instrumentation through current funds and new proposals, develop data tools and best practices, build a portfolio of multi-modal training programs, and create mechanisms for interdisciplinary networking and collaboration.

View the report here.

2026 Kenneth J. Lanfear Award for Outstanding Technology Paper

Congratulations to the authors of “Machine Learning for a Heterogeneous Water Modeling Framework,” recipient of the 2026 Kenneth J. Lanfear Award for Outstanding Technology Paper in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association. The award is given annually by the American Water Resources Association. The paper grew out of research spanning three Water Prediction Innovators Summer Institutes (2021-2023). Several of the authors are Summer Institute alumni, who have since completed their degrees and now work as assistant professors, at NASA and NOAA, as postdocs, and at private engineering firms.

Authors: Jonathan M. Frame, Ryoko Araki, Soelem Aafnan Bhuiyan, Tadd Bindas, Jeremy Rapp, Lauren Bolotin, Emily Deardorff, Qiyue Liu, Francisco Haces-Garcia, Mochi Liao, Nels Frazier, and Fred L. Ogden.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

CyberWater2 Training: Advancing Hydrologic Modeling Through Scientific Workflows

In September and October 2026, CUAHSI and the CyberWater2 project team at the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University Indianapolis ran a virtual training on CyberWater, a framework for linking models, data, and computing tools into reproducible hydrologic modeling workflows. Forty-seven participants from at least 24 institutions in five countries participated.

Through live demonstrations, discussions, and hands-on exercises, participants built and ran data-intensive modeling workflows. They could also draft and share a short proposal for using CyberWater in their own research or extending it with other models and tools.

Thank you to the CyberWater2 project team, instructors, and participants. Want to learn more about CyberWater? Lecture recordings are available free on the CyberWater page of the CUAHSI website and the CyberWater playlist on CUAHSI’s YouTube channel.

Member Spotlight

Congratulations to Alexandra Orr, who earned her PhD at Penn State in 2025, advised by Beth Boyer, and is now Assistant Laboratory Professor of Biology at Bucknell University. Her doctoral work was partly supported by an NSF Critical Zone Collaborative Network Hub award (EAR-2012893), and all three of her dissertation papers were published in 2026, each acknowledging the award:

JOBS

The CUAHSI job board is open to recruiters and job seekers. To post an opportunity relevant to the water science community, fill out the job posting form. Current openings:

  • Stony Brook University, Department of Geosciences, invites applications for a full-time tenure-track or tenured faculty position at the Assistant or Associate Professor level in hydrogeology.
  • Texas State University, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, seeks a Postdoctoral Scholar to lead research focused on modeling streamflow magnitude and surface water presence in perennial and non-perennial headwater streams.
  • View more job posts here!

CALENDAR DATES