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expertise, composed of individuals at all
stages of their career. Examples of such
projects include evaluation of the possible
processes leading to growth of the inner
core, assessment of the global scales of
mantle heterogeneity, and evaluation of
fluxes of subducted volatiles.
Once the groups are formed, they spend
the following two weeks working on the
selected research topics (Fig. 1). Typically, a ing about complex multidisciplinary prob-
group will start by reviewing the relevant
literature and performing simple computa-
tions. In two weeks, there is rarely sufficient assess and quantify how CIDER experi-
time to complete the research, but many of
the groups are able to identify a roadmap for
future steps, and continue working together
over the following year, with modest support
from CIDER. This can have various out-
comes, ranging from presentations at
American Geophysical Union (AGU) to
publications and collaborative proposals.
The progress of the research groups is
presented to the community at a one-day
workshop held at The University of
California Berkeley right before or after the
meeting of the AGU each December. In
addition, CIDER provides support for two or
three multidisciplinary working groups each
year (see reports at http://www.deep-earth
.org/wiki_cider). These working groups,
formed independently of the summer pro-
grams, bring together 10–20 scientists from
different disciplines to advance the under-
standing of, or define research goals for,
specific topics or concepts. For example, a
working group was formed in 2013 to define
what is needed to construct the next seismo-
logical global Reference Earth Model
(REM), with input from the mineral physics
and geodynamics community. It was
decided that the next REM should include
long-wavelength 3D structure, which is by
now well constrained. An international
effort to construct the REM is now under
way, supported by the NSF.
Most importantly, CIDER provides a plat-
form for successive generations of very early
career scientists to encounter their peers
from different disciplines, forming lasting
professional relationships, and to interact
with some of the leading senior experts in
our field. Conversely, for the senior partici-
pants, it is an opportunity to get to know the
upcoming generations. CIDER summer
sessions include many opportunities for
informal interactions, such as joint lunches
and twice-weekly dinners/barbecues. Also,
because CIDER is such a long program,
we make all possible efforts to be family
friendly. Numerous dual-career couples
with young children have participated in
the CIDER programs. Many former
CIDER students have gone on to faculty
jobs and are now returning, five or more
years later, as lecturers, substantially
improving the age and gender distribution
of the latter. Such was the case for six of
the lecturers in the 2016 CIDER program.
Other alumni have gone on to successful
careers in business, politics, or govern-
ment, benefiting from CIDER through
experience in building and leading teams,
working on open-ended problems, think-
lems, and learning how to communicate
across disciplines. A future challenge is to
ences have impacted the careers of partici-
pants, the nature of their research, and the
impact on interdisciplinary collaborations,
over both short and long time scales.
Summer programs on topics related to the
deep Earth have been held every two years
at KITP since 2004. CIDER participants
take advantage of exposure to concurrent
KITP programs with some relevance to geo-
science, such as, for example, a program on
“Dynamos” in 2008 and the “Physics of
Glasses” in 2010. The FESD funding has
allowed CIDER to broaden its scope and,
in alternate years, include themes related
to research questions at the interface of
the solid Earth and the fluid envelopes
(e.g., “Mountain Building” or “Solid
Earth and Climate”).
Many of the same “grand challenge ques-
tions” have been brought up repeatedly in
discussions at CIDER, and progress is tan-
gible over the past 12 years; for example, the Foundation (NSF) under grant EAR1135452. We
stated goal of our first program in 2004 was
to combine information from geochemistry
and seismology to better constrain deep
Earth dynamics. This is an extremely ambi-
tious goal, because geochemistry samples
the Earth locally and global coverage is
Figure 1. Research group at work during the 2016 CIDER summer program at KITP.
www.geosociety.org/gsatoday
spotty, whereas at the global scale, seismic
tomography best constrains long-wavelength
structure. In the past decade, tomographic
resolution has improved significantly, as has
global coverage of geochemical sampling.
Geochemists and seismologists understand
each other better and, together with geody-
namicists, are now better poised for such
multidisciplinary analysis. Several such
efforts are under way, and CIDER will
revisit the questions of the origin and impli-
cations of mantle heterogeneity in its 2018
summer program, to be held at KITP.
Judging by the momentum gained over
the past decade, CIDER helps fill an impor-
tant need for the geoscience community,
stimulating research on outstanding interdis-
ciplinary geoscience problems and engaging
geoscientists at all levels in this effort. This
need, as discussed at the community work-
shop held at the Marconi Conference Center
(Marshall, California, USA) from 5–8 May
2016, will continue with the arrival of suc-
cessive new generations of early career geo-
scientists. We are looking forward to con-
tinuing CIDER for the foreseeable future
and to broadening international
participation.
For more information about CIDER, visit
http://www.deep-earth.org.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CIDER is funded through the Frontiers in Earth
Systems Dynamics program of the National Science
also acknowledge support from the Kavli Institute
of Theoretical Physics under NSF grant
PHY-1125915.
MANUSCRIPT RECEIVED 29 DEC. 2016
REVISED MANUSCRIPT RECEIVED 10 APR. 2017
MANUSCRIPT ACCEPTED 10 APR. 2017
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