It's been about 3 months since my time in Urbino, Italy at the Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology! Here I look back fondly on the things I learned, friends I made, and pasta I ate.

The Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology (USSP) is an annual short course sponsored by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling. It is held every summer for ~16 days in Urbino, a historic walled city in central Italy. This session, the course had particular focus on  biogeochemical cycling and modeling.

Each day we attended lectures and participated in hands-on exercises focused on individual proxies, time intervals, and/or modeling techniques. Sessions were facilitated by different instructors from all around the world. Early in the program, we went of a field trip to Gubbio, Italy where we saw the classic Creataceous-Paleogene boundary section! We measured and described subsections in great detail for later cycle identification and orbital tuning.

The program included a poster session during which I shared my Cambrian I/Ca research with fellow participants and faculty. While I had fun discussions about the I/Ca proxy, it was a bit harder to find fellow fans of the Cambrian!

Outside of coursework, I enjoyed dinners with new friends from all around the world and a trip to the beach on a free day. I consumed plenty of pasta and explored the charming town of Urbino. After the course I traveled solo to Venice for some sightseeing.

All in all, the USSP was a wonderful experience and I am so grateful to a scholarship from NSF which allowed for my participation!