January 27, 2026

Dear SCIL Community,

We are soon approaching the first anniversary of our work being under the umbrella of SCIL, and from day one, our vision has been clear: To form a lab that unites data science, high-performance computing, advanced AI and human collaboration to address society’s most complex challenges. As we enter 2026, we are working every day to turn that vision into reality.

At this time last year, we saw a stark reminder of why our mission matters. The LA fires brought sharp focus to the need for new technologies and partnerships to address catastrophic wildfire. This urgency drives the WIFIRE Program in our longstanding work with practitioners to advance the tools and platforms that have become critical to disaster response and resilience.

But wildfire is just one of many societal issues where we innovate. Our Data Platforms — such as the flagship NSF-funded National Data Platform (NDP) — are the first step to scaling scientific collaboration for the good of society. These platforms help create a future where massive datasets can be accessed, understood and used to accelerate AI and innovation. As our composable systems work becomes the computing fabric for our platforms, we continue to participate in important edge-to-HPC infrastructure projects like NSF Expanse, Sage and NRP.

Along with supporting open science at scale, SCIL is transforming Education for the next wave of problem-solvers. Last year we hosted several data challenges that gave students experience with real data, real tools and real-world challenges. This is how we build a workforce prepared for tomorrow’s technologies and the many responsibilities in the world ahead.

What lies ahead for SCIL in 2026 will further extend our approach to scientific innovation and collaboration. Along with wildfire, data platforms and education, we will tackle other challenges in agriculture, food security, fusion energy, quantum material discovery and all-hazard resilience. We are expanding our work in digital twins for complex systems and AI-enabled science and decision support, as well as developing adaptive, agentic and collaborative AI methods that enhance reasoning and decision-making across disciplines.

And as always, we will do all of this with our esteemed partners. Thank you to the many researchers, collaborators, students and team members who have worked with us over the last two decades, and in our first year now as SCIL. As we look ahead for the years to come, I’m excited for what we will learn, build and accomplish together. 

 

— Ilkay Altintas, SCIL Founding Director

The National Data Platform (NDP) continues to scale collaborative science across institutions and research areas. Together with our co-leads at the University of Utah, last year NDP expanded its reach through partnerships with the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot, the NSF Global Center program and Earthscope. In 2026, we are looking forward to sharing our ongoing work with SAGE and the UC Santa Barbara Quantum Foundry with the NDP community, and working with the Department of Energy’s national fusion program and our partners in General Atomics.

Powered by the NDP, the Wildfire Science and Technology Commons is swiftly becoming the connective hub for data-driven innovations in wildfire. We have a data platform in progress for the California Wildfire & Forest Resilience Task Force, and actively support the Commons community with hosted seminars, robust datasets and a growing expert network. If you haven’t joined the network yet, join now!

Firemap continues to serve frontline decision-makers with real-time information and predictive models. Our ongoing public/private partnerships within FIRIS, led by CAL OES, were highlighted last year in a UC San Diego Magazine cover story. We also made advances on extended attack modeling with support from NASA, integrated fire detection layers with our partners in NOAA, and this year we will continue an exciting research direction to include newly developed multi-scale WUI models into Firemap with funding from NSF’s FIRE Program. In addition to fire modeling, we highlighted our operational multihazard work with a recent paper on structural damage assessment via aerial thermal remote sensing and AI.

BurnPro3D is a next-generation prescribed fire planning tool, co-developed with partners at USGS and LANL. In 2025, our collaborations with practitioners at CAL FIRE and the Moore Foundation SPARKs were instrumental in improving the platform. We also made important advances in site-specific vegetation modeling and immersive visualization techniques through our UC Climate Action project and the NSF Fireplan project, leveraging the Wildfire Commons infrastructure for prototyping with partners. In 2026, we will further expand our capabilities to include 3D winds built on real-time weather data and smoke modeling with partners such as ESTCP.

Our collaboration with San Diego Gas & Electric continues with data-driven tools like WXMap, helping utilities ensure safety, mitigate wildfire risk and enhance grid resilience. We additionally enable community access to all fire environment data shared with SDGE through the Wildfire Commons. In 2025, this work also contributed to the new Grid Data Hub, part of the U.S.-Canada Center on Climate-Resilient Western Interconnected Grid (WIRED Global Center) that we participate in. This year we look forward to hosting a data challenge through this hub with our partners at the University of Utah and the University of Calgary.

We were excited to expand our impact and partnership in technologies accelerating agriculture and natural resources innovations in 2025. Last year the NDP enabled the team at F3 Innovate to host their Frost Risk Data Challenge, and in 2026, they have planned for several more challenges that advance the use of data and technology for agriculture. For more information on hosting a data challenge on NDP, contact Pedro Ramonetti.

Support from Google.org will help the Wildfire Commons bring together members to explore wildfire digital twins as a part of a new case study community. This spring, the Commons will host a workshop at Google headquarters to explore the challenges and needs digital twin solutions can address, which will shape a technical blueprint for a federated and generalizable digital twin backend framework.

The CORE Institute remains our cornerstone for experiential education in societal problem-solving. Last year we hosted initiatives and workshops with the Sentinel Sites Network, National Food Security & Innovation (NAFSI) Hub, and the Innovation Landscape Network. Internships and data challenges also allowed students from around the world to work directly with technical communities and develop data- and science-informed solutions to real-world challenges. 

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