[community] Help us understand your needs for machine learning training and resources

• To: "community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: [community] Help us understand your needs for machine learning training and resources
• From: Douglas Dirks <ddirks@xxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2025 11:23:30 -0600

Hello NSF Unidata Community,


NSF Unidata is participating in a UCAR-led investigation of the growing
need for Machine Learning (ML) training in the Earth System Science (ESS)
community, and we need your help to understand your needs. ML skills are
typically acquired through specific graduate studies, specialized
coursework, self-directed study, or on an ad-hoc basis. We want to hear
from you about what we could do to fill some of the ML training gap!

Do you need instructor guides to help implement ML topics in your courses,
a formal in-person two-week-long course for professionals, a self-paced
asynchronous online lesson for students to augment the curriculum, Python
notebooks to use in lab sessions or workshops?  We want to hear what you
need and how we can help.

Our survey should take only 5-10 minutes to complete, and will be open
through October 17th. We want to hear from as many people as possible; feel
free to share the survey with your colleagues in the ESS community.

To be clear, we are focused on Machine Learning -- not Agentic AI,
Generative AI, or LLMs (e.g., ChatGPT).

If you have any questions about the survey, please feel free to reach out
to Bryan Guarente (guarente@xxxxxxxx) or Mariana Cains (mgcains@xxxxxxxx).

Thank you for helping us understand how we can help you use or teach ML
techniques!

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: [community] Help us understand your needs for machine learning training and resources (now with survey link!)
    • From: Douglas Dirks