A free training series for energy graduate students
In the course of our work at Catalyst, we’ve been lucky enough to work with energy researchers at many institutions. So often, we see people run into the same set of problems – handling data that’s too big for Excel, reproducibly connecting datasets without shared IDs, and writing code that can be easily re-run and updated when a paper is reviewed or when a new year of data comes in.
Now, thanks to generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Energy & Environment Program, we’re pleased to announce “Open Energy Data for All,” an initiative to support energy graduate students. We’ll offer training in foundational data and software skills that enable faster, more open, and more reproducible energy data analysis.
Here’s what we have planned:
- We’re hosting a monthly online seminar series addressing key challenges in energy data analysis
- We’re working to develop a hands-on energy data curriculum with support from The Carpentries
- We’ll give open energy data tutorials at several conferences around the country
- Finally, we’ll host a two-day, in-person data lab, bringing together graduate students from across the U.S. to collectively tackle real-world energy data problems.
Kicking off our monthly seminar series
Whether wrestling with APIs or just trying to find the right dataset for your research, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s why, for our first monthly skill-building webinar, we’re starting with an introduction to the US open energy data landscape. Join us!
Intro to the US Open Energy Data Landscape
Oct. 30th, 4:30 – 5:30 PM Eastern (20:30 – 21:30 UTC)
We’ll address questions like:
- What free and public energy data exists for the U.S., and how can I access it?
- How have people used that open data in the energy transition?
- What common challenges are there with using this data?
- How can I evaluate open datasets I find online?
- How may data availability affect my research topics?
We’ll be running more webinars monthly – they’re designed to be drop-in, and will be recorded, so don’t worry too much about missing one or another.
Want to learn more?
If you’re interested in hearing more about these projects, sign up for our workshop newsletter and subscribe to our calendar of events! If you’re a faculty member interested in learning more, or in hosting us for a talk or workshop, we’d love to chat – drop us a line at hello@catalyst.coop.