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Call for Applications: CLIMAKID Winter School 2026

Written by rpuri on .

 

 

Digital Solutions for Attributing Climate Change Impacts on Child Nutrition and Health

Come and do a climate change attribution study on undernutrition-related health impacts on children in South Asia with us!

Overview: Undernutrition in children is a critical and climate-sensitive public-health challenge. Children’s developing physiology and high dependence make them uniquely susceptible to climate-driven shocks, with lifelong consequences. Attribution science, in turn, is a branch of climate science that aims to quantify the climate change signal in observations of climate-related, natural, and human systems. Attribution results provide important input for IPCC assessments and draw public attention and increase awareness for climate change issues. They can support climate litigation and climate justice more generally and even demonstrate the potential of specific adaptation choices to reduce the impact of climate change. Yet attribution studies on climate change impacts in human systems are sparse, and studies on human health have largely focused on direct heat impacts in adults and high-income settings. CLIMAKID addresses this evidence gap by developing data-driven, open, and easy-to-use digital tools that integrate climate, agricultural, and health data to quantify climate-driven undernutrition risks in low- and middle-income countries.

CLIMAKID aims to address the lack of evidence of and capacity for climate impact attribution on child undernutrition by processing climate, agricultural, and health data and integrating them into an open-access, easy-to-use digital tool in a co-development and capacity-building process with scientists and stakeholders from across the most food-insecure world regions

Winter School Objective: CLIMAKID aims to bring together early-career scientists to apply both trend and event attribution analyses to assess how climate change has impacted agriculture and child health in South Asia via specific weather and climate events over the last decades.

What participants will do

  • Work hands-on with climate, agricultural, and health datasets and models relevant to child undernutrition.
  • Apply state-of-the-art attribution methods to specific health outcomes and impact events for regional impact attribution studies.
  • Co-design and prototype features of an open-access digital tool for climate-nutrition attribution.

Faculty and Partners

 Who should apply

Early-career researchers, post-doctoral fellows and PhD scholars working in or strongly interested in:

  • Climate science / climate attribution
  • Public health / child nutrition / epidemiology
  • Agricultural systems / food security modelling

For climate scientists, we expect

  • experience in working with CMIP output and climate observations in netcdf format
  • expertise in using python, else R, for climate data analysis
  • expertise regarding extreme climate and weather events in South Asia
  • expertise regarding observational climate data in South Asia
  • interest in climate change impacts

For agricultural scientists, we expect

  • experience in data collation and preparation for crop modelling, calibration and running spatial crop simulations (DSSAT, APSIM, InfoCrop and others) and interpreting their outputs
  • ability to perform spatial crop simulations for climate impacts using CMIP data; understanding key drivers of climate impact on crop yields
  • expertise in key agricultural commodities regarding the sensitivity of crops rice, wheat, soybean, millets, mustard, groundnut and sorghum in South Asia to climate and weather

For health scientists, we expect

  • experience in epidemiological modelling of health outcomes
  • ability to read and write R, or experience in Stata and willing to learn R

In general:

  • experience with, or willingness to learn, usage of Gitlab and working remotely via SSH
  • motivation to join fun, dense two weeks (4 days + weekend free + 4 days) of hands-on collaborative, interdisciplinary science

We particularly encourage applicants with research focus on South Asia and based in Bangladesh, India, Nepal or Sri Lanka. Women researchers and candidates from under-represented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

 Logistics

  • Dates: 10–20 February 2026
  • Location: BISA–CIMMYT, New Delhi, India
  • Slots: 15 participants (selection across three thematic areas: Climate, Health, Agricultural Modelling; and across the South Asian region)
  • Costs: CLIMAKID will cover travel, accommodation and food as per BISA protocols. Participants are responsible for any other personal expenses.

Selection & Timeline

  • Applications will be reviewed by a selection panel.
  • Selection will consider relevance to the three thematic areas (Climate, Health, Agricultural Modelling), experience, and the regional balance (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka).
  • Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

 How to Apply:

  1. A one-page motivation letter describing your interest, qualification, and how the winter school will support your work.
  2. A brief CV/resume (max 2 pages).
  3. Interested applicants in the CLIMAKID Winter School 2026 are encouraged to send the above to: acasa@cgiar.org 

Deadline – 15th November, 2025