EMERGE Monthly Webinar Series
Supported by ESIP · Built on NASA’s GLOBE Observer · From the EMERGE project at the University of Florida
AI and citizen science, first Thursday every month.
EMERGE hosts a free lunch and learn on the first Thursday of each month, October 2026 through December 2027, at 12:00 pm ET on Zoom. Each session brings in a guest expert to look at how AI, geospatial tools, and community-collected data can answer real environmental and public health questions. Bring your lunch, anyone is welcome.
First session: Thursday, October 1, 2026 · 12:00 pm ET · on Zoom
Get session reminders: Join the EMERGE newsletter
About the series
The EMERGE webinar series is a free monthly lunch and learn about where AI meets citizen science. On the first Thursday of each month at 12:00 pm ET, a guest speaker shares how they use AI, geospatial tools, or citizen science in their work over the lunch hour, and then opens the floor for questions and discussion.
Sessions are open to educators, students, researchers, practitioners, and anyone curious about community-collected environmental data. Each one runs on Zoom and is either a short talk from the guest or a Q&A with EMERGE communications lead Caroline Nickerson.
Topics coming up
A look at the themes across the series.
- Intro to citizen science
- Convergence of citizen science and computing
- Open geospatial data products and data discoverability
- Citizen science and environmental education
- Youth engagement and citizen science
- In-person and field data collection with GLOBE
- Remote sensing for citizen science data
- Citizen science data quality and AI
- Open-source tools for AI and citizen science
- AI and citizen science with open mapping data
- Careers in AI, citizen science, and nonprofit programs
- Student careers in AI and hackathons
Session schedule
First Thursday of each month, 12:00 pm ET, on Zoom. All sessions are free.
- Thursday, October 1, 2026
- Thursday, November 5, 2026
- Thursday, December 3, 2026
- Thursday, January 7, 2027
- Thursday, February 4, 2027
- Thursday, March 4, 2027
- Thursday, April 1, 2027
- Thursday, May 6, 2027
- Thursday, June 3, 2027
- Thursday, July 1, 2027
- Thursday, August 5, 2027
- Thursday, September 2, 2027
- Thursday, October 7, 2027
- Thursday, November 4, 2027
- Thursday, December 2, 2027
What EMERGE is
EMERGE stands for Environmental Monitoring through Education, Research and Geospatial Engagement. It is a project of the Geospatial Digital Informatics (GeoDI) Lab at the University of Florida, led by Dr. Di Yang, that helps educators, students, and communities use citizen science and geospatial AI to answer real environmental and public health questions.
Much of the work runs on NASA’s GLOBE Observer app, which lets anyone with a smartphone record observations of mosquito habitats, land cover, clouds, and trees that feed both local decisions and global research. EMERGE’s core research pairs those community observations with NASA Earth system modeling to forecast mosquito-borne disease risk in a changing climate, and the project turns the same methods into free, bilingual learning resources so more people can take part.
Made possible by ESIP
Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is a nonprofit community of Earth science data professionals, founded in 1998 and funded through cooperative agreements with NASA, NOAA, and USGS. It connects more than 170 partner organizations across federal agencies, universities, and industry, and helps them build, share, and improve the data tools that Earth science depends on. Through the ESIP Lab, it awards small grants that let teams try out and expand applied Earth-data technologies.
EMERGE received an ESIP grant to expand participatory science with geospatial AI and educational resources. With that support, EMERGE built open educational resources, shared them widely, launched this webinar series, and ran two community hackathons.
What we accomplished
- Two bilingual textbooks, free in English and Spanish
- About 200,000 citizen scientists reached through partner channels
- More than 2,000 students and teachers trained in Guatemala, with the work ongoing
- Two community hackathons, one of them covered by NASA
Deliverable 1 · Curriculum
We published two bilingual digital textbooks and an open-source Python package for working with participatory science data. The first textbook covers data analysis with Python and Google Earth Engine and assumes no prior coding. The second extends into geospatial AI and machine learning.
Links: All resources · Textbook 1 · Textbook 2 · geoemerge package
Deliverable 2 · Reach
We promoted the curriculum through our partner SciStarter, reaching its community of roughly 200,000 citizen scientists by newsletter, social media, and email, and in person during an outreach trip to Guatemala that trained more than 2,000 students and teachers in a single week.
That work is continuing. Teachers took home bilingual materials to keep using in their own classrooms, and thousands more students are being reached as the program grows. Explore the Spanish-language resources at es-geoemerge.com.
Deliverable 3 · Webinar series
The series described at the top of this page! From October 2026 through December 2027, one session a month brings a guest expert together with our community. Sign up on Zoom or join the newsletter to attend.
Deliverable 4 · Hackathons
We hosted two hackathons where teams turned GLOBE Observer and satellite data into maps, dashboards, and working prototypes for environmental and public health questions. The first, in January 2026 at the University of Florida’s Marston Science Library, brought together 13 teams and was covered by NASA. The second wrapped up in September 2026.
Links: NASA coverage · Project gallery
Keep in touch with EMERGE
EMERGE puts environmental data tools in the hands of educators, students, and communities. Explore the resources, come to a webinar, or start collecting observations yourself.
geoemerge.com · Español · Resources · Events · Newsletter
