Urban Integrated Field Laboratories Hold First PI Meeting

September 2023

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program hosted the first annual principal investigators’ (PI) meeting for the Urban Integrated Field Laboratories (UIFLs) on Sept. 27–28, 2023.

Researchers from each of the 4 UIFLs—Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC), Southeast Texas (SETx), Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS), and Southwest Urban Corridor (SW-IFL)—presented project overviews and updates at the hybrid virtual and in-person meeting held in Rockville, Md.

Plenary talks were followed by breakout sessions on topics ranging from science challenges in atmospheric, hydrology, and greenhouse gas research to education and workforce development, community co-design, equity and social vulnerability, and more. Full details can be found in the meeting agenda.

Abstracts and posters from the meeting are also now available on the UIFL site.

The PI meeting:

• Fosters important collaborations among UIFL projects and scientists.
• Provides BER program managers the opportunity to interact with project teams and review progress.
• Helps identify both significant advances and future research needs.

UIFLs are large multi-institutional and multidisciplinary projects sponsored by BER’s Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division. The projects aim to advance understanding of the predictability of urban systems and their two-way interactions with the climate system to inform equitable climate and energy solutions.