Courses

Student Perspectives: Conference and Workshop Experiences

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By Ana Arama (ana.arama@pgr.reading.ac.uk), Jake Keller (j.p.keller@pgr.reading.ac.uk), Ken Rui Fong (kenrui.fong@pgr.reading.ac.uk) and Maia Arama (m.arama@pgr.reading.ac.uk)

Introduction

Attending conferences and workshops is an essential part of every academic’s life (and perhaps non-academics as well, since some of us will one day leave academia!), and therefore it is only natural that us PhD students get to go as well. In this blog Maia, Jake, Ken and Ana tell us about their experiences of attending some of these scholarly gatherings this year.

Editors’ tip for first-years: though most of these opportunities are communicated to you by your supervisors, research groups or PhD admin, it is good to keep an eye out yourself for conferences that may have skipped their radar. Following key organizations on LinkedIn is always helpful for that. In fact, that is where Ana found out about the energy modelling workshop!

Maia Arama – RMetS Early Career and Student Conference

At the beginning of July, I attended the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) Early Career and Student Conference. This 3-day conference is designed for early career researchers, undergraduates, master’s and PhD students. The conference location changes every year; this time it was held at the University of Exeter.

The programme opened with a relaxed social (drinks and pizza) on Sunday. Based on my experience, I highly recommend going to pre-conference socials. I felt this was the ideal way to meet other conference delegates which made walking into the first full day of the conference less intimidating.

Over the following two and a half days, I attended a series of 15-minute talks covering themes relating to weather and climate extremes, atmospheric chemistry, climate impacts, and machine learning. Poster sessions were in the late afternoon on the first two days. I found that presenting my research as a poster was great practice for learning how to build a story for my research and defending my methodological choices – both useful skills to have in the lead-up to the monitoring committee meetings we have here at Reading!

The conference also included a workshop on storytelling for researchers and a panel on science communication, both good reminders that research isn’t just about the work itself but also how we communicate it. Frequent coffee breaks provided ample opportunity for networking and socialising, and a vegan/vegetarian BBQ and quiz on the first day were also a lot of fun.

Overall, I had a genuinely positive experience at this conference. Hearing everyone’s talks and discussing their posters was truly inspiring. As a PhD student, one unexpected highlight was connecting with other PhD students outside of the University of Reading. Being reminded that we all share the same struggles relating to data processing, setbacks and navigating PhD milestones despite different research areas was reassuring!

The conference environment was very relaxed and friendly, so I would highly recommend attending this conference if it’s your first time presenting or if you want something a bit less intimidating than the RMetS Annual Weather and Climate Conference!

More details about the conference can be found here: https://www.rmets.org/conference/early-career-and-student-conference-2026

Jake Keller- Diabatic Processes Workshop

This spring, I attended the Diabatic Processes Workshop in Wolkersdorf, Austria. The workshop brought together around 70 researchers from a wide range of universities and included both senior scientists and early-career researchers, such as me.

The programme was structured into seven presentation sessions over four days, covering topics such as jets, cyclones, predictability, convection, and more. In addition, two poster sessions showcased a broad range of research related to diabatic processes. I presented some of my relevant work in the predictability session, and I even had the opportunity to co-convene a session. The workshop concluded with group discussions, where participants considered the future direction of the field, focusing on what researchers can do next and identifying the data needed to advance our understanding.

Mealtimes were particularly valuable for informal discussions, allowing me to connect with researchers whose papers I had previously read and to ask them questions about their work. Regular coffee breaks also provided opportunities to follow up on presentations while they were still fresh in my mind!

Beyond the scientific content, the workshop provided an excellent opportunity to gain insight into the diverse topics currently being explored within an already specialised research area. Smaller, focused workshops like this also offer valuable opportunities for networking and make it easier to have more meaningful and extended conversations with other scientists.

Since the workshop, I have continued discussions with researchers conducting similar modelling experiments, and we are now sharing updates on our progress and results. I have also had the opportunity to speak with a visiting scientist who attended the workshop, discussing one of his papers that closely relates to my research.

In addition to building connections, these smaller workshops are highly rewarding. They create a strong sense of contributing to and advancing the field, something that isn’t always easy to feel during every stage of a PhD. I would highly recommend this type of workshop to other early-career researchers.

Further information on the workshop can be found here: https://diabatics2026.w.uib.no/

Ken Rui Fong- ParaChute Conference

I attended the ParaChute (“Understanding turbulence and convective processes”) conference held in Reading in July this year. The conference attracted many attendees from a wide range of universities and modelling centres from all over the globe, working across theory, modelling and observations. The conference talks were divided into seven themes across five days, touching on various aspects of convection & turbulence, such as grey-zone parametrization, observing systems and microphysics-turbulence coupling. I personally got to present a poster on my PhD project on grey-zone convection parametrization and benefited greatly from interesting discussions with other senior researchers working on modelling and convection.

Despite the range of topics and different disciplinary approaches, I found nearly all the sessions interesting and relevant because they are underpinned by the ‘grand challenge’ of convection & turbulence parametrization in high-resolution models. I also found it enlightening to hear from researchers from modelling centres talk about their experiences and challenges faced in deploying operational km-scale models and performing forecast verification at convective scales – it was a sobering reminder that many things still have to be done downstream of model development before we might see any gains realized.

Apart from the talks and poster sessions, the committee had organized social events on Wednesday afternoon, and we were given a choice of a tour of the university’s atmospheric observatory, or an orienteering course around the campus. I opted for the former since it would be my first time touring the observatory. The conference capped off with a panel discussion on Friday summarizing contributions from group discussions earlier in the week about the future of modelling and observing systems for convection and turbulence. All in all, I had an interesting time at the ParaChute conference, and hopefully I’ll be able to attend many more like it in the future!

Further information about the Parachute conference can be found at https://research.reading.ac.uk/parachute/.

PyPSA Energy Modelling Workshop, Ana Arama

This September, I attended the PyPSA Workshop held at the University of Birmingham. PyPSA stands for Python for Power System Analysis, and is a free, open-source modelling tool used to simulate and optimise energy systems.

The workshop lasted two days and featured a combination of lectures on PyPSA’s key features and hands-on examples demonstrating how to model different aspects of the energy system. There were five Jupyter notebooks which we could work through, each one focusing on a different aspect of PyPSA. They ranged from basic use cases of the tool to more advanced topics, such as incorporating uncertainty using stochastic modelling and security of electricity supply analysis under different scenarios, like gas price shocks. I particularly enjoyed learning how to use the stochastic modelling feature of PyPSA, since this is a feature that has only recently been added to the toolbox. It was a good way for me to see how uncertainty could be incorporated in energy modelling analysis.

Overall, the workshop was a good opportunity to learn more about the capabilities of PyPSA, and I think it was a good step towards increasing my energy modelling skills. I also found the environment of the workshop to be very relaxed, with plenty of time to ask questions about the various topics covered.

I would recommend this course to anyone who is fairly new to energy modelling and wants to gain a better understanding of how energy modelling tools can aid in power system planning as well as power system design under uncertainty. Although the course provides an introduction to PyPSA, I think it would be helpful to have some prior basic knowledge on terminology used in energy system modelling. I would also recommend doing some of the online examples on the PyPSA website to gain familiarity with the tool before attending the workshop.

The resources from the workshop can be found here: GitHub – pypsalabs/workshop-202609: Workshop materials for energy system modelling with PyPSA, Birmingham, September 2026. · GitHub

Honest Reviews of NCAS Training Courses

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By Maia Arama (m.arama@pgr.reading.ac.uk), Molly Macrae(molly.macrae@pgr.reading.ac.uk) and Giacomo Giuliani (g.giuliani@pgr.reading.ac.uk)

A big part of doing a PhD at Reading is the opportunity to complete training courses that expand our skillsets and knowledge. Below, we summarise and review our experiences of different courses offered by the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) that we completed at the beginning of our PhDs.

Introduction to Scientific Computing (ISC), Maia Arama

In November 2025, I completed the ISC course run by NCAS. The course consisted of three modules designed to provide students with essential skills and tools for data analysis. Module 1 introduced Linux commands, Module 2 covered an introduction to Python programming, and Module 3 focused on data analysis tools in Python (e.g. numpy, x-array, cf-python). Modules 1 and 2 were aimed at beginners, while Module 3 was aimed at those with some prior experience. After completing a short quiz, I was able to skip Module 2 and complete only Modules 1 and 3. Module 1 was delivered online while Modules 2 and 3 were taught at NCAS headquarters in Leeds.

The most valuable things I learned from Module 1 was how to combine commands using pipes and filters, as well as writing loops and shell scripts. I now regularly use these skills to process data for my PhD project! I did find that more time was spent on easier sections, while more challenging sections felt rushed at times. However, all material was made available to us on Software Carpentry enabling us to practice with the resources after the module. In Module 3, I found it particularly useful to learn how to use cf-python and cf-plot. We also completed a challenge using weather API data where we created NetCDF files, combined our data and produced a plot. The module also introduced version control with Git and the use of remote GitHub repositories. All teaching was done using Jupyter Notebooks on Jasmin.

Overall, I had a fantastic experience attending the course in Leeds. The staff were readily available to answer questions and help with debugging code. It was also great to meet other friendly and motivated PhD students, which created an inspiring working environment. Those with more experience in Python may find some of the material quite basic. However, if you have limited coding experience or want to increase your confidence coding in Python, I would highly recommend this course!

Links to the relevant NCAS ISC GitHub pages can be found here:

Module 1: https://ncasuk.github.io/ncas-isc-shell/06a-environment-variables/index.html

Module 3: https://github.com/ncasuk/ncas-isc/

Introduction to the UK Chemistry-Aerosol (UKCA) Model, Molly Macrae

UKCA is a community atmospheric chemistry–aerosol model used to study how atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, and climate interact within the Met Office Unified Model, supporting research on climate forcing, air quality, and ozone processes. The ‘Introduction to UK Chemistry Aerosol (UKCA) Model’ course aims to provide experience of running the model through a set of practical, self-paced tutorials. The course was free to attend and took place in-person in Leeds with accommodation, travel and food included.

Over the 3 days, you are provided with a login to Monsoon3 and work through online tutorials at your own pace with expert UKCA users on hand to answer any questions or help with technical issues. These tutorials covered how to use the main parts of the UKCA model, setting up and running experiments, and how to adapt the model to specific purposes. There were also pre-recorded walkthrough videos provided, which were incredibly useful if anything from the instructions was unclear. Additionally, the logins were made available for a couple of weeks beyond the course, and a Slack channel was set up for any queries that arose after the course.

Despite most of the training being individual, I really appreciated that the course was held in-person. It was a great opportunity to meet other people using UKCA and to get guidance and feedback from the experts about how I plan to use UKCA in my project.

Overall, I found the course very useful, and I still go back to the provided resources now as I run the model. As expected for a course introducing the running of a climate model, there is a lot of information to take in, and after a few months, the elements of the course that have stayed with me are the parts I am actually using the model for now. Furthermore, the resources provided are clear and available for returning to at a later date. The self-paced format also allows you to tailor the course by spending longer on tutorials most relevant to your research. I would strongly recommend this course to anyone considering using UKCA in their work.

Course webpage with tutorials: UKCA Chemistry and Aerosol Tutorials at UMvn13.9 – UKCA

Introduction to the Unified Model, Giacomo Giuliani

The ‘Introduction to the Unified Model (UM)’ course is a 3-day course organised by NCAS at its headquarters in Leeds. It consists of two complementary parts: a series of lectures on the UM components and their applications, and tutorial sessions focused on working with suites and model outputs.

The UM is the atmospheric model for numerical weather prediction and climate projections. It can be run using different configurations, also called suites. The “how to use it” part mainly focuses on becoming familiar with the (un)intuitive, and sometimes quixotic, architecture of the workflow, as well as how to run simulations. Much of the tutorials involved working on the terminal interface of Archer2 and the UM graphic user interface, in other words, a good refresher for Shell and Bash scripting.

At the end of the course, I proudly scrolled my notebook page of “Commands, Tips and Common Errors when running the UM” noticing how long – and hopefully comprehensive – it was. I think the main takeaway of the course was: to be able to troubleshoot any issues, to create your own model configurations, and to understand the overall process behind a simulation within the UM framework.

The practical part for the UM course can be found on GitHub. Thus, in principle, one could just “learn from home”. However, the lectures are not the only aspect that makes this course extremely valuable. I rapidly assessed in thirty days and several hours between yawns and desperation the amount of time it would take me to complete this course on my own. It was really valuable and helpful to be able to talk to people who develop and use this model every day.  On the other hand, this course may be too high-level for a person only interested in using the UM for numerical simulations. It provides a general overview of the architecture of the UM workflow, but it lacks the use of a testbed simulation to simulate a common research situation.

Overall, I would definitely recommend the course to anyone frequently working with the UM, as soon as they have a solid base in Linux.

Here is the link to the GitHub page: https://ncas-cms.github.io/um-training/index.html