November 2026
Dear CIG Community,
When I became Co-Director, I wrote in these pages that CIG’s original mission had been achieved and that it was time to look forward: to decide which challenges we want to take on next and what we need to build to meet them. Looking forward also meant preparing for CIG’s next generation of leadership, and that has been a central part of my role from the start. This year we put out an open call for a new leadership team. John Naliboff answered it with a compelling vision for the organisation, and the Executive Committee has named him Director Designate. With that in place, it is time for me to step back, and this announcement is my last act as Co-Director.
Lorraine Hwang continues as Director for the rest of CIG’s current funding period, and she and John will share the leadership of CIG as Director and Director Designate. That is how Lorraine and I have worked together as co-directors, and I am confident it will work just as well for them. John also serves ex officio on all of CIG’s committees to ensure continuity through the handover. He has assembled a new leadership team (currently Mark Behn, Timo Heister, Lorraine Hwang, Tushar Mittal, Bob Myhill and Sandra Piazolo), and he will take on more of CIG operations as the transition proceeds, becoming Director at the start of 2029.
The infrastructure goals of CIG’s earlier phases have largely been met, and that leaves room for bigger questions. The next phase will be shaped by the community, but some broad directions are already emerging: coupling processes across scales and across the boundaries between the deep Earth, the surface and the hydrosphere; extending our reach into planetary science; bringing AI/ML into our workflows; and preparing our codes for GPU and exascale computing. John and the team will explore a wider range of funding avenues, including those that can support international teams, and will look for ways to give early-career researchers a direct role in shaping CIG’s proposals and codes. Having served CIG from Australia, I am particularly glad to see the international emphasis.
CIG has always been a community-driven organisation, and the coming year is when the priorities for its next phase will be set. John and the leadership team will be seeking input from across geodynamics and the wider Earth science community, and the key opportunity to shape CIG’s future will be the 2027 Geodynamics Community Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on 26–29 July 2027. Topics will include the role of AI in geodynamics, sustaining our research and software communities, and the science needed to meet societal challenges in critical minerals, hazards and energy. Alice Gabriel and I are co-chairing the workshop, so this is not quite goodbye from me. CIG plans to support travel and lodging for early-career attendees, and places will be limited, so please save the date. This is a real opportunity, especially for early-career researchers, to define the next frontier challenges for our field.
My thanks go to Lorraine for her partnership throughout my time as Co-Director; to the members of the Executive and Scientific Steering Committees, past and present; to the volunteers who run our workshops, tutorials and hackathons; and to everyone who has contributed to CIG’s codes. Two decades of progress in computational geodynamics, shaped in no small part by CIG, leave this community well placed to take on whatever challenges it chooses next. I am very pleased to be handing over to John, and I look forward to seeing where he and all of you take CIG.
Louis Moresi
Outgoing Co-Director, CIG
Professor, Australian National University