For 20 years, graduate students in the climate sciences have organized an annual conference entirely by and for themselves. After a small gift to the University of Washington GCC in 2024 and engagement with a great student team at MIT in between, the 2025 conference showed why that model works.

The Graduate Climate Conference (GCC) brings together early-career researchers from across the climate sciences — atmospheric, biological, marine, earth, and social — for three days of interdisciplinary exchange at a retreat-style venue. The goal is not just knowledge sharing but connection: the kind of cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary relationships that shape careers and catalyze collaborations.

The 2025 conference, held November 7–9 at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, drew 104 participants from more than 40 subject areas and 49 institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

The program included five oral sessions, three poster sessions, two keynote speakers, and four workshops covering topics from data analysis in Python to science communication and community outreach. For the first time in the conference’s history, a public poster session drew 78 registered community members to engage directly with graduate researchers — a notable expansion of the conference’s reach beyond the scientific community.

Keynote speakers Dr. Hilary Palevsky and Dr. Marcela Loría-Salazar addressed both the science and the human dimensions of climate careers, offering early-career researchers a model of engaged, resilient scientific practice.

Attendee feedback captured something the program format is specifically designed to produce: a sense of genuine connection that larger conferences rarely achieve. Participants described leaving with new collaborators, a feeling of belonging in the climate science community, and renewed motivation for their work.

CO2 Foundation is glad to support the Graduate Climate Conference. The climate field’s long-term capacity depends on whether early-career scientists feel connected, supported, and equipped to do this work for the long haul — and the GCC is one of the few spaces specifically designed to build that foundation.

The 20th Annual GCC will take place on November 6-8, 2026 at the Pack Forest Conference Center, located in Eatonville, Washington.

Claude helped create this post.