Overview

The signature ZTF summer school continues in 2026. The school will run in the last week of July (27 to 31) in its usual hybrid format. In person participants will be welcomed to the campus of the University of Minnesota, USA, while online attendies can connect via Slack. We expect to accept approximately 10 in-person candidates and up to 40 remote participants.

This year the theme is "Science discovery in multi-survey alert streams".

Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is now online and generating millions of alerts per night. To maximize our sensitivity to fast transients, other wide field systems, such as the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), continue to follow the footprint of LSST to probe otherwise inaccessible timescales down to a few hours, enabling us to study previously unobserved physics of well-known transients, e.g., supernovae (SNe), while also discovering rare, fast evolving sources, e.g., kilonovae. However, this brings to us the challenge of using multiple surveys to identify the nature of transients in alert streams, as detection does not mean identification, and identification does not mean understanding.

In this summer school, we will focus on data science techniques for classification and characterization necessary for maximizing science with combined Rubin LSST and ZTF data in this new multi-survey era.

Funding

Our sponsor at the University of Washington Seattle will continue to support our summer school in 2026. This financial support to cover the accommodation (in shared rooms) for our in-person participants. Depending on availability, we may be able to provide drinks and snacks during the school as well. In-person attendees need to secure their own funding to cover travel expenses.

Eligibility

The level of the material presented in the school is aimed at early (1st or 2nd year ) graduate students who will most benefit from attending. Master students who can demonstrate previous research experience in astronomy will also be considered.

In 2026, international applicants can only attend the summer school remotely.

Application

The application deadline is June 1st (00:00 UTC).

To apply for the school, you will need to fill a registration form and submit it along with:

• A one page motivation letter outlining (1) your motivation to join the school, (2) your background and experience with astronomy research, and (3) how the school will benefit your future research work.
• Those who want to join in-person should request a recommendation letter from an adviser or otherwise someone who can speak to your experience and potential. You should provide the email address of your referee in the application form and we will contact them with instructions on how to submit their recommendation letters.

Note that in order to upload files into the registration form, you will be asked to sign into your Google account.

Participants of any of the former ZTF summer schools are eligible and welcome to apply again.

Selected applicants will be invited in mid June.

 

Program

A detailed program for the summer school will be posted in June.

The school format includes short lectures and interactive hands-on sessions when students will work with Python Jupyter notebooks to complete data processing assignments under the guidance of tutors. The school will run approximately between 9 am and 4 pm CDT (UTC-5) each day. During that time, students who participate online will be able to submit questions to tutors via Slack. Students whose time zones make it inconvenient to join the school can work on their own. They are welcome to submit questions on Slack and our tutors will respond as soon as possible.

Accommodation

We will book rooms for our participants at the Days Hotel . The hotel is within walking distance from the campus of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities where the summer school sessions will take place. Note that rooms are shared between two participants.

Organizer

• Michael Coughlin - Lead Organizer(UMN)
• Ivona Kostadinova - ZTF Program Coordinator (Caltech)
• Local Organizing Committee

Contact

If you have questions, please get in touch with us at ztf dot summer dot school @ gmail.com