Workshop Updates

The 2026 Annual IEP Workshop will be held March 16-18, 2026 at the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) building (715 P Street, Sacramento, CA 95814).

An Open Call for Abstracts will be coming soon in mid-August! So, gather your colleagues together and get your ideas flowing for presentations and posters.

The workshop will be a free, hybrid event held in the CNRA Auditorium (~290 in-person attendees). Oral presentations will be livestreamed over Zoom for virtual attendees.

Workshop registration will open in early February 2026.

How to Receive Workshop Updates

This announcement is being shared widely across multiple listservs and contact groups. To receive future announcements about the 2026 Annual IEP Workshop, make sure to subscribe to the IEP Workshop listserv.

To subscribe, visit the subscription page on the IEP website to sign up for the workshop listserv and any other listservs of interest.

Please share this announcement widely with colleagues, peers, managers, staff, and others who may be interested in presenting or attending the workshop.

More information on the 2026 workshop will be posted soon on the Annual IEP Workshop page.

Questions

Contact workshop organizers Adam Nanninga (Adam_Nanninga@fws.gov) and Christine Joab (iep@wildlife.ca.gov).

Note: This initial email is being sent to multiple IEP listservs and Contact Groups, so apologies for cross postings. Please subscribe to the IEP workshop listserv for future updates.

REMINDER:

The kickoff meeting for planning the 2026 IEP Workshop is July 1.

Our goal is to have a group of participants that represent the diverse group of agencies, organizations, and academic institutions that make up IEP.

Join us or ask an early career staff or student member to participate.

Send an RSVP email to iep@wildlife.ca.gov and adam_nanninga@fws.gov.

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Invitation to Participate: Planning the 2026 IEP Workshop Program and Events

The 2026 IEP Workshop planning kick-off meeting will be held virtually Tuesday, July 1, 2025, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. via MS Teams. (See Teams link below).

We need volunteers to help us plan the workshop program and activities. We also need volunteers to moderate sessions, organize a training event, run the poster session, host the mentor luncheon, manage the early career awards program, coordinate workshop volunteers, organize an art display, and craft fun and relaxing after-hours social events.

Are you interested in helping us? If so, come join us!

The Workshop Organizing Chair (Adam Nanninga, USFWS) will discuss the planning process and expectations, roles and responsibilities, timelines, and then we’ll dive into brainstorming ideas.

Interested in attending? Send an RSVP email to iep@wildlife.ca.gov and adam_nanninga@fws.gov.
Interested in attending but cannot make the kick-off meeting? Don’t worry, you can still participate!
Send us an RSVP email asking to add you to the participant list.

Mark your Calendar!
Microsoft Teams - 2026 IEP Workshop Kick-off Planning Meeting
7/1/2025 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 280 277 594 941 8
Passcode: hp7eR2at
Dial in by phone: +1 916-535-0984,,507530076#
Phone conference ID: 507 530 076#

Who can participate?

• IEP member agencies, IEP partner organizations (including students from partnering academic institutions), and IEP stakeholders.
• Early career staff are encouraged to participate with approval of their supervisor.
• Career staff are also encouraged to participate.

What is the time investment to participate?

• There are 11 scheduled meetings between July and January focused on developing the program and events.
• This is an active work group with planning deadlines. We need participants to bring ideas and a can-do spirit!
• We also need volunteers to chair activities within the workshop. Consider being a session moderator or chair an event task.

Background materials:

• 2026 Workshop Planning Calendar (PDF)
• Workshop Principles (PDF)
• Workshop Planning Committee Roles & Responsibilities (PDF)

Please share this invitation with others!

This announcement is being shared widely, so apologies for the cross postings!

Invitation to Participate: Planning the 2026 IEP Workshop Program and Events

The 2026 IEP Workshop planning kick-off meeting will be held virtually Tuesday, July 1, 2025, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. via MS Teams. (See Teams link below).

We need volunteers to help us plan the workshop program and activities. We also need volunteers to moderate sessions, organize a training event, run the poster session, host the mentor luncheon, manage the early career awards program, coordinate workshop volunteers, organize an art display, and craft fun and relaxing after-hours social events.

Are you interested in helping us? If so, come join us!

The Workshop Organizing Chair (Adam Nanninga, USFWS) will discuss the planning process and expectations, roles and responsibilities, timelines, and then we’ll dive into brainstorming ideas.

Interested in attending? Send an RSVP email to iep@wildlife.ca.gov and adam_nanninga@fws.gov.
Interested in attending but cannot make the kick-off meeting? Don’t worry, you can still participate!
Send us an RSVP email asking to add you to the participant list.

Mark your Calendar!
Microsoft Teams - 2026 IEP Workshop Kick-off Planning Meeting
7/1/2025 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 280 277 594 941 8
Passcode: hp7eR2at
Dial in by phone: +1 916-535-0984,,507530076#
Phone conference ID: 507 530 076#

Who can participate?

• IEP member agencies, IEP partner organizations (including students from partnering academic institutions), and IEP stakeholders.
• Early career staff are encouraged to participate with approval of their supervisor.
• Career staff are also encouraged to participate.

What is the time investment to participate?

• There are 11 scheduled meetings between July and January focused on developing the program and events.
• This is an active work group with planning deadlines. We need participants to bring ideas and a can-do spirit!
• We also need volunteers to chair activities within the workshop. Consider being a session moderator or chair an event task.

Background materials:

• 2026 Workshop Planning Calendar (PDF)
• Workshop Principles (PDF)
• Workshop Planning Committee Roles & Responsibilities (PDF)

Please share this invitation with others!

This announcement is being shared widely, so apologies for the cross postings!

Greetings IEP Community Members,

Thank you for attending the 2025 IEP Annual Workshop. The recordings from the 3-day workshop have now been posted to the CDFW YouTube channel under the IEP Workshops 2025 playlist.

The links to the Poster Forum, Program, and Abstract Booklet can still be found on the IEP Annual Workshop page.

We hope you enjoyed the workshop and we look forward to seeing you in March 2026.

Greetings IEP Community Members!

We hope you enjoyed the 2025 IEP Annual Workshop. It was a pleasure seeing so many of you in-person, and we were excited to see so many people joining us virtually over Zoom. We are already scheduling the workshop for 2026, so save the dates March 16 - 18, 2026. A call for volunteers to help us plan the program will be sent during mid-summer, so make sure you are subscribed to our Annual Workshop listserv.

2025 Early Career Awards

The scores for the Best Early Career Talk and the Best Early Career Poster at the workshop have been compiled from the judges and we are excited to announce the winners.

Congratulations to Sienna White, Kim Luke, and Delia Carpenter for the Best Early Career Talk.

• Sienna White (University of California, Berkeley) Session 14: Phytoplankton & HABs (Part II)
  • Talk Title: "Vertical Mixing in Dead-End Channels of the Delta"
• Kim Luke (Delta Stewardship Council) Session 12: Management & Policy
  • Talk Title: "Science Action Agenda Progress Summary"
• Delia Carpenter (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) Session 8: Fish Modeling
  • Talk Title: "Recovering High-Frequency Plankton Dynamics from Low-Frequency Samples"

Congratulations to Brandy Smith, Katie Hostetler, and Emma Freedman for the Best Early Career Poster.

• Brandy Smith (California Department of Water Resources) Poster Category: Habitat
  • Poster Title: "Creating and reconnecting floodplain habitat in the Yolo Bypass: an Overview of DWR restoration projects"
• Katie Hostetler (California Department of Fish and Wildlife) Poster Category: Methodology Assessment & Improvement
  • Poster Title: "Evaluating Image-Based Deep Learning Methods for Zooplankton Sample Processing"
• Emma Freedman (California Department of Water Resources) Poster Category: Methodology Assessment & Improvement
  • Poster Title: "Old Clips, New Tricks: Dry Fin-Clip Preservation for High-Throughput Genetic Processing"

Poster Forum - Now Live!

The 2025 Poster Forum is now live on the IEP website. It contains the poster images and poster abstracts from the 2025 IEP Annual Workshop. Many, but not all, of the poster images have been added to the forum. In some cases, poster authors were unable to share their poster image. If you are interested in viewing a poster that is missing from the forum, please contact the poster author directly using the email shown in their abstract. Abstracts can be found under their associated poster category inside the forum, or you can look them up in the Abstract Booklet.

Workshop Recordings

We are busy reviewing and correcting the closed captions of the workshop recordings. Once the files are complete, we will share the link to the recordings. Thank you for your patience!

If you have additional questions related to the workshop, send an email to iep@wildlife.ca.gov.