The Department of Earth and Climate Science, IISER Pune, is pleased to announce a five-day hands-on workshop on computational geodynamics. It is aimed at learning the evolution of second-order structures within the Earth’s shells separated by thermodynamic phase boundaries, and their end products constituting dramatic landforms on its surface, using the open-source Advanced Solver for Planetary Evolution, Convection, and Tectonics (ASPECT) numerical model driven by the laws of conservation and thermodynamics.

Dates: February 23 - 27, 2026 

Venue: Department of Earth and Climate Science, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune

Perspective

The Earth’s diverse features, both within and on the surface, are fashioned by a cascade of 3 thermodynamic engines. All three are driven by a common stream of its outflowing latent heat released from the inexorable freezing of the inner core and radioactivity in the mantle and the crust, as it traverses regions of varying viscosity and density across 3 first-order phase boundaries and more gentle gradients within them. Furthermore, all three: i) fluid convection in the outer core resulting in a largely dipolar geomagnetic field, ii) viscoelastic mantle convection and iii) plate tectonics, are driven by the same laws of conservation and thermodynamics. Being open and connected thermodynamic sub-systems, the three inevitably affect the workings of each through inter-system feedbacks which appear as metastable structures in their boundary layers, in turn, conditioning the growing asymmetry of heat fluxes across them. For example, the geographical positions of new emerging oceanic lithospheres and of sinking colder ones, themselves a result of mantle convection geography, alter the prevailing thermal gradients of the mantle and, thereby, the lateral course of upward flowing heat fluxes.

The commonalities of primary heat sources and of the governing physical laws, make it possible to construct a numerical model of the Earth system to study its complex dynamics that do, however, result in producing some coherent structures both within the Earth and on its surface. The workshop is aimed at inspiring young adventuresome minds to use the versatility of such numerical frameworks as the ASPECT, to understand, to visualize and to test, for example, mantle process models to explain a host of dimly understood Earth structures and phenomena through a creative synthesis of Physics and AI.

Interested participants of the workshop, including young graduates and researchers, may write at ecs_app@iiserpune.ac.in with the subject GIFT2026, by December 31, 2025, along with their brief CV and a 200-500-word essay on what aroused their interest in joining the workshop and future plans, if any. Workshop organizers will offer local hospitality to all invited/selected participants. Travel expenses for about 6-8 young researchers will also be met by the workshop organizers.