[GEM] THE GEM MESSENGER, Volume 27, Number 34

Thu Jul 20 22:44:38 PDT 2017

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     THE GEM MESSENGER
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Volume 27, Number 34
Jul.21,2017

Announcement submission website: http://aten.igpp.ucla.edu/gem/messenger_form/

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Table of Contents

1. Report of the Steering Committee on the 2017 GEM Summer Workshop

2. DRIVE Science Centers RFI NNH17ZDA008L

3. AGU Fall 2017 Session: Ion Upflow/Outflow Physics and Their Effects on the Coupled Magnetosphere-Ionosphere System (SA010)

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1. Report of the Steering Committee on the 2017 GEM Summer Workshop
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From: Jacob Bortnik (jbortnik at atmos.ucla.edu)

The GEM summer workshop was held over the week of 18-23 June 2017, in the seaside city of Portsmouth, VA.  There were 156 Scientists, 73 Students, and 6 guests in attendance this year representing 12 countries and approximately 66 different institutions. The Steering Committee (SC) met on Sunday 18 June, and discussed a number of key items, summarized below:

1. Election of a new “at large” SC member: we received 6 applications which were all very competitive and after some discussion, a vote was held and the new SC was member was chosen to be Dr. Vania Jordanova (LANL).

2. Venue for the 2018 GEM summer workshop: the venue has now been secured and the dates set.  The meeting will be held at Eldorado hotel in Santa Fe, NM over the period 16-22 June 2018.  Plans are currently being made with the CEDAR SC for some meeting overlap and joint sessions with the CEDAR meeting which is scheduled for 24-28 June, 2018 in the same venue.

3. GEM organizational style: The SC is aware that the meeting style is trending more towards AGU-type presentations and away from the traditional workshop style that is the signature of the GEM workshop.  This has received much discussion in the SC meeting and we will be sending a community-wide poll in September soliciting feedback and ideas on how best to preserve the workshop atmosphere of the GEM meeting.

4. There were two motions put forward during the SC meeting, aimed at preventing potential conflict-of-interest issues.  Both were passed unanimously and were:  (1) Voting members of the Steering Committee shall not be allowed to be leader of a new FG, (2) Steering Committee members that are involved in the leadership of a proposed focus group shall not be present during its discussion and vote. These motions will be reflect in the bylaws shortly.

The student representatives have had their regular rotation, with the current senior student rep (Anthony Saikin) rotating out, and the newly elected student rep (Ryan Dewey) rotating in.  We thank Anthony for all his hard work over the past 2 years and welcome Ryan to the SC, to join the existing student rep, Suzanne Smith.

I also want to mention the great work done by the student reps this year in organizing the poster competition, judging and awards.  The winners of this year’s student poster competition were:

* Irina Zhelavskaya (GFZ Postdam) – Global System Modeling
* Terry Liu (University of California, Los Angeles) – Solar Wind - Magnetosphere Interaction
* Boyi Wang (University of California, Los Angeles/Boston University) - Magnetosphere - Ionosphere Coupling
* Dong Lin (Virginia Tech) and Michelle Salzano (University of New Hampshire) – tied for Magnetotail and Plasma Sheet
* Mohammed Barani (West Virginia University) – Inner Magnetosphere

We also commend Ms. Shreeya Khurana, who won the CCMC research contest this year, and was presented her award on the last day of the GEM meeting.  Shreeya won over 7 other prestigious awards for this project, and did all this while still a freshman at Montgomory Blair High School.

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2. DRIVE Science Centers RFI NNH17ZDA008L
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From: Janet Kozyra (Janet.Kozyra at nasa.gov)

NASA is soliciting input to assist the Heliophysics Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate and NSF’s Atmospheric and Geospace Science Division in planning a solicitation in the 2018 timeframe for DRIVE-Inspired Integrative Science Centers, focused on ambitious and achievable grand challenge goals to deliver on innovative and breakthrough science, via a NASA-NSF partnership. Responses of up to 10 pages to this Request for Information should be submitted by August 18, 2017, via NSPIRES in response to NNH17ZDA008L.

DRIVE-Inspired Integrative Science Centers (hereinafter called DRIVE Centers) envisioned to be implemented as a NASA-NSF partnership, are part of an integrated multi-agency initiative, DRIVE (Diversity, Realize, Integrate, Venture, Educate), put forward as a high priority recommendation of the 2013 Solar and Space Physics Decadal Survey. The DRIVE Centers are envisioned to be focused on grand challenge goals that are both ambitious and achievable within the lifetime of the center. Under the auspices of the DRIVE initiative, the Decadal Survey recommended, "NASA and NSF together should create science centers to tackle the key science problems of solar and space physics that require multidisciplinary teams of theorists, observers, modelers, and computer scientists." In order to maximize the potential for these science centers to deliver on innovative and breakthrough science, a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science, recommends that they be designed with aspects that support collaboration and deep knowledge integration across the full range of expertise (scientific, computational, educational) within them.

This RFI is released in parallel to input from the Committee on Solar and Space Physics provided through their 2017 report, "Heliophysics Science Centers".   Both will be fully considered in planning a solicitation for DRIVE Centers.

For more information, including references and existing resources and opportunities which may be useful in planning such a center, please see the full text of the RFI which may be found on NSPIRES under NNH17ZDA008L.  This open solicitation can be located on
https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/solicitations.do?method=open

Questions concerning this Request for Information should be addressed to 

Dr. Janet Kozyra
Heliophysics Division
Science Mission Directorate
Office:  202-358-1258
Cell:  202-875-3278
Janet.kozyra at nasa.gov

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3. AGU Fall 2017 Session: Ion Upflow/Outflow Physics and Their Effects on the Coupled Magnetosphere-Ionosphere System (SA010)
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From: Shasha Zou (shashaz at umich.edu)

Dear All,

We would like to invite you to submit an abstract to session SA010 at the 2017 Fall AGU meeting. This session is cross-listed in SPA Aeronomy (SA) and SPA Magnetospheric Physics (SM).

Link to the AGU session SA 010: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm17/preliminaryview.cgi/Session23642

The detailed information about our session is listed below.

SA010: 
Ion Upflow/Outflow Physics and Their Effects on the Coupled Magnetosphere-Ionosphere System

The Earth’s ionosphere is a significant source of plasma to the magnetosphere and a strong influence on the dynamics of the geospace environment. The ionospheric source is contributing plasma to the plasmasphere, the plasma sheet, and the ring current and through wave-particle interactions is playing a major role in the formation and dynamics of the radiation belts. Hence, understanding of the strength and dynamics of the ion upflow/outflow particles up into the magnetosphere is of critical importance to understanding how the magnetosphere is populated and influenced by these initially low-energy particles.
In this session, we invite papers that attempt to improve understanding (1) on the influences of low-altitude ionosphere-thermosphere conditions on ion upflow/outflow into the magnetosphere, (2) on the energization processes of the ion upflow/outflow population for the polar wind, and (3) on the effects of ion outflow population on magnetospheric dynamics. Papers on data, theory, and modeling are invited.

Best regards,
Shasha
On behalf of session conveners 
(Vince Eccles, Barbara Giles, Shasha Zou)

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