[SPA] SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume XXVI, Issue 60

[Newsletter Editor]

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER
Volume XXVI, Issue 60
Nov.04,2019

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Table of Contents

1. NASA Living with a Star Town Hall Meeting / Annual Briefing at Fall AGU

2. Input for Inclusive Conferences

3. 2020 SCOSTEP Awards - Call for Nominations

4. MEETING: 19th Annual International Astrophysics Conference, March 8-13, 2020 -  Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

5. MEETING: First Galileo Solar Space Telescope Workshop

6. SCOSTEP Visiting Scholar Program

7. JOB OPENING: Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Theoretical/Computational Space Plasma Physics

8. JOB OPENING: FINAL REMINDER - Assistant or Associate Professor – Experimental/Instrumentational Space Plasma Physics at West Virginia University

9. JOB OPENING: Postdoc Opportunity in Middle and Upper Atmosphere Research

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Announcement Submission Website: http://goo.gl/forms/qjcm4dDr4g


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NASA Living with a Star Town Hall Meeting / Annual Briefing at Fall AGU

From: Mark Linton (mark.linton at nrl.navy.mil)

Date: Sunday, 8 December 2019, 6:30-8:30 pm

Location: Parc 55, 55 Cyril Magnin Street, San Francisco, California, 94102, USA 

Room: TBD

From: Jeff Morrill, Simon Plunkett (NASA Heliophysics/LWS),
Mark Linton & Anthea Coster (LPAG Co-Chairs)

We will hold the Town Hall meeting for the NASA Heliophysics Living With a Star (LWS) program at the Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco, CA. You are invited to attend and hear brief summaries on the program status and to participate in an open discussion of the LWS program. Please check the LWS TR&T website at lwstrt.gsfc.nasa.gov for updates to the room location prior to the meeting.


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Input for Inclusive Conferences

From: Beverly Smith-Keiling, Andreas Keiling (smithbev at umn.edu)

The “AGU Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan” outlines Diversity and Inclusion statements. One proposed strategy to increase inclusion is to collect attitudes and ideas regarding inclusive practices (which includes smaller focused conferences such as AGU Chapman).

We, as AGU members and researchers who have hosted several past AGU Chapman conferences, are responding to the “call to action” working toward these goals and ask that you kindly provide input by completing this brief (8-10 minute) anonymous survey.

Follow this link to the survey: 
https://umn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5coPS6d5qZLNR0V

This survey is administered through the University of Minnesota Qualtrics platform. It was recently initiated and posted in AGU Connect, and it is now posted to this newsletter of the AGU Member Community. If you have taken it already, thank you.

All responses will remain anonymous and will be summarized to help develop guidelines in efforts toward making conferences more inclusive. More information about procedure, privacy and contact information is provided at the start of the survey. 

We thank you for your time. Gathering input from a broader audience is a first step toward making conferences such as AGU Chapman and others more inclusive. Please feel free to distribute this link to others in the AGU community.

Sincerely,
Beverly Smith-Keiling, University of Minnesota
Andreas Keiling, University of California-Berkeley


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2020 SCOSTEP Awards - Call for Nominations

From: Patricia Doherty (Patricia.Doherty at bc.edu)

Dear Colleagues, 

This is a call for nominations for the 2020 SCOSTEP Awards for Distinguished Scientist, Distinguished Young Scientist and Distinguished Service.

Recognizing the societal importance of studies in the field of solar-terrestrial physics and willing to give credit to scientists who contribute significantly to these studies and to SCOSTEP activities, the SCOSTEP Bureau has instituted the following awards:

SCOSTEP Distinguished Scientist Award
This award is given to recognize an outstanding contribution of a scientist to solar-terrestrial physics

SCOSTEP Distinguished Young Scientist Award
This award is given to young scientists who have achieved considerable success in solar-terrestrial physics and have taken an active part in SCOSTEP-related activities

SCOSTEP Distinguished Service Award
This award is given to recognize unique contributions to SCOSTEP-related activities, to realization of its programs and events.  This award is nominally made in odd years.  Since no award was made in 2019, it may be made retroactively in 2020.

The SCOSTEP awards are given biennially. The first Distinguished Science Awards were awarded in 2014.  The first Distinguished Service Award was given in 2013.  The Award Statutes and Procedures are placed on the SCOSTEP web site section “Awards” (http://www.bc.edu/scostep/programs/awards). 
Award nomination packages (nomination letter and nominee’s curriculum vitae) for the Distinguished Awards should be submitted to the SCOSTEP secretariat (Patricia.Doherty at bc.edu) by no later than February 29, 2020, as a single pdf file. The currently serving SCOSTEP Executive Officers and Bureau Members are not eligible for nomination. The award decision will be made by the SCOSTEP Awards Committee (SAC) and communicated to the Bureau after considering submissions. 


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MEETING: 19th Annual International Astrophysics Conference, March 8-13, 2020 -  Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

From: Gary P Zank (garyp.zank at gmail.com)

FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT: The 19th Annual International Astrophysics Conference will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 9 - 13, 2020.(Welcome Reception and Evening Registration begins Sunday, March 8).

The theme of the meeting will be “From the Sun's Atmosphere to the Edge of the Galaxy: A Story of Connections” and will follow the same format as before with 25-minute presentations punctuated by selected 40-minute invited talks that will explore various themes in greater detail.

The oldest and the newest heliospheric space missions are distinguished by being the farthest and closest human-made objects ever to the Sun. Plunging into the depths of the atmosphere of the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe, launched in August 12, 2018, has completed the first three closest encounter passes to the Sun, edging closer and closer with each orbit. The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, entered the very local interstellar medium on 25 August 2012 and at ~141 astronomical units from the Sun is now further from the Earth than any other human-made object. Voyager 2, following suit, likewise entered the interstellar medium on 5 November 2018. It is astonishing that, since the start of the space age in October 1957, humankind is now reaching for the stars and reaching into a star itself. Despite the immense distance separating the Voyager spacecraft from the Sun, the Sun’s influence is still felt in the immensely cold distant very local interstellar medium. This conference will address the connected story of how the Sun and interstellar medium collectively shape their environment.

Conference Website: www.icnsmeetings.com/conference/19thannual/index.html

E-mail inquiries about the meeting should be directed to Gary Zank at garyp.zank at gmail.com or icnsmeetings at gmail.com.


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MEETING: First Galileo Solar Space Telescope Workshop

From: Luis Eduardo Antunes Vieira (luis.vieira at inpe.br)

Save-the-Date Announcement

The First Galileo Solar Space Telescope Workshop (GSST01) will be held at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in São José dos Campos, Brazil, from March 16-18, 2020.

The Galileo Solar Space Telescope (GSST) is a cornerstone mission to provide accurate measurements of the magnetic field in the photosphere and outer layers of the solar atmosphere within the international effort to understand the evolution of the Heliosphere. The main goal of the workshop is the preparation for formal mission analysis, including the assess the technical and programmatic feasibility of the possible concepts (Phase 0/A) of the GSST Mission to be conducted from May/2020 to November/2020.

The underlying basic questions to be addressed by the GSST mission are: What are the fundamental physical/plasma processes at work in the Sun? How does the solar dynamo work? What is the relative contribution of different physical processes that lead to the heating of the outer layers (Chromosphere to Corona)? What are the effects of the magnetic structure of the outer layers of the Sun on the evolution of the Earth's highly coupled atmosphere-ocean system? What is the response of the magnetic field and energetic particles in the vicinity of our planet, i.e. the Earth’s inner magnetosphere region, due to different solar wind structures?

Registration and abstract submission will open on 11.19.2019.

http://www.inpe.br/gsst/


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SCOSTEP Visiting Scholar Program

From: Patricia Doherty (patricia.doherty at bc.edu)

Dear Colleagues,

The SCOSTEP Visiting Scholar (SVS) program is accepting applications for 2020.  The SVS program is a capacity building activity of the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP), which will complement its new scientific program (PRESTO) and public outreach activities.  The mission of PRESTO (Predictability of Variable Solar-Terrestrial Coupling) is to identify predictability of the variable solar-terrestrial coupling and its performance metrics through modeling, measurements, and data analysis, and to strengthen communication between scientists and users.

The SVS program provides training to graduate students in well-established solar terrestrial physics institutes, for periods of one to three months. The training will help the awardees advance in their career in solar-terrestrial physics using the skills they learned during the training. SCOSTEP will provide the airfare, while the host institute will provide living expenses. 

Note that the eligibility requirements for this program have changed. The new program is now open to applicants from all countries but with an emphasis on applicants from developing countries.  The program is limited to Masters and PhD students with the requirement that the recipient has not received a PhD at the time of application to the program.

Interested candidates should contact one of the SVS program hosts; develop a project and work out the details of the visit. Once the applicant and host agree on a visit, the applicant needs to prepare an application package including:

1) a 2-page proposal of the work to be performed as an SVS awardee
2) applicant's curriculum vitae 
3) dates of the proposed visit
4) letter of recommendation from the applicant's supervisor - with verification on the applicant's eligibility
5) letter from the host scientist/institution indicating that the work will be mutually beneficial

Send a single pdf file with all of the above to SCOSTEP's Scientific Secretary, Patricia Doherty (patricia.doherty at bc.edu).  Deadline for applications is February 21, 2020.   Please contact the host institution well before this deadline, to enable full consideration of your application.

Click to following link for a list of SVS host institutions:
https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/research/sites/institute-for-scientific-research/research/SCOSTEP/scostep--programs/scostep--svs.html

Sincerely,
Patricia Doherty
SCOSTEP, Scientific Secretary


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JOB OPENING: Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Theoretical/Computational Space Plasma Physics

From: Seth Dorfman (sethd at SpaceScience.org)

The Space Science Institute (SSI) invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Scientist to be based in Los Angeles, CA. The selected candidate will take a leading role in research on ultra low frequency (ULF) waves and associated ion distributions in the Earth's ion foreshock.

The goal of the project is to elucidate the physical processes responsible for the properties and dynamics of ULF waves in the Earth's ion foreshock.  The postdoctoral scientist will focus on analysis of existing runs from the Vlasiator global-hybrid simulation code and computation of the ULF wave growth rates using LEOPARD, a new arbitrary distribution function solver.  The selected candidate will work with SSI Research Scientist Dr. Seth Dorfman, who will be responsible for the observational aspects of the project.  Results will aid our broader understanding of waves generated by energetic particles in ways applicable to present and future space missions.

For more information on the physics, see our paper related to the proposed work: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017GL072692

Knowledge/Education: A Ph.D. in space plasma physics or related fields is required prior to the start date of the position.  Applicants should demonstrate the potential to publish research results in peer-reviewed high-quality journals, good communication skills, and the ability to work independently.  No prior experience with Vlasiator or LEOPARD is expected, but applicants should demonstrate computer skills that show they will be able to learn these tools quickly.  Experience with computational data analysis and plasma physics theory is considered an advantage.

This is a full-time position with benefits.  In addition to competitive salary and benefits, there will be a budget for to the candidate to visit Finland and interact with Prof. Minna Palmroth and the Vlasiator team (essential for learning Vlasiator data analysis).

The appointment is expected to start in April 2020, although exact start date is flexible.  Interviews will be conducted at the 2019 AGU meeting or via Zoom; therefore please submit your CV to begin the application process by November 30, 2019 to ensure full consideration.

Contact Dr. Seth Dorfman (https://www.spacescience.org/bio.php?emp=SDORFMAN) with questions.

For more information and details on how to apply, visit the full posting:
http://spacescience.org/opportunities.php


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JOB OPENING: FINAL REMINDER - Assistant or Associate Professor – Experimental/Instrumentational Space Plasma Physics at West Virginia University

From: Paul Cassak (Paul.Cassak at mail.wvu.edu)

FINAL REMINDER - The Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in experimental or instrumentational space plasma physics. We anticipate filling this position at the Assistant Professor level, but exceptional candidates may be considered at Associate Professor. The creation of the position was facilitated by an NSF Faculty Development in the Space Sciences grant. The preferred start date is Aug. 14, 2020. The position requires a Ph.D. or equivalent degree in physics or a closely related field and a commitment and ability to establish an independent externally funded research program, excel in teaching physics at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and support departmental efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The successful candidate will present an excellent record of research productivity as evidenced by publication record and scientific collaborations. WVU’s space plasma physics program has existing strengths of: (1) cubesat technology development; (2) space-relevant laboratory experiment; (3) solar observations; (4) solar theory/simulation; (5) magnetospheric theory/simulation and machine learning; (6) magnetospheric observations; and (7) atmospheric drag. The department moved into a new facility with state-of-the-art research laboratories in 2012, and there is available clean room space and on-campus shared facilities. The department energetically supports DEI (https://physics.wvu.edu/about/diversity-equity-and-inclusivity). WVU is a comprehensive land grant university with R1 Carnegie Classification. WVU is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and welcomes applications from all qualified individuals, including minorities, females, individuals with disabilities, and veterans.

To apply, go to https://careers.wvu.edu/career-opportunities, click View Faculty Positions, and navigate to the job title. Required documents include: (1) cover letter, (2) curriculum vitae including complete list of publications, (3) succinct five-year research plan, and (4) statement of teaching philosophy and experience. Arrange for three letters of recommendation to be sent to plasmasearch at mail.wvu.edu. Review of applications will begin Nov. 15, 2019, and will continue until the position is filled. This is an abridged ad - please see https://physics.wvu.edu/research/plasma-and-space-physics/wvu-space-plasma-physics-job-opening and contact Paul.Cassak at mail.wvu.edu with questions.


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JOB OPENING: Postdoc Opportunity in Middle and Upper Atmosphere Research

From: Alan Liu (alan.liu at erau.edu)

The Center for Space and Atmospheric Research (CSAR) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Associate position in the area of middle and upper atmosphere research.  The position will involve research on gravity wave dynamics  and related processes in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere region based on observations from ground-based remote sensing instruments at the Andes Lidar Observatory in Chile.  Strong background in atmospheric dynamics is desired and experiences with data analysis of lidar, meteor radar, and airglow imagers are a plus.  Candidates with experience in ground-based remote sensing instrumentation will also be considered. 

Qualifications

The initial duration is two years with potential for renewal. PhD in atmospheric sciences, space physics, or related discipline is required. Interested applicants should apply online at https://embryriddle.taleo.net/careersection/002/jobdetail.ftl?job=190648 
by submitting the following materials:

1. A cover letter describing background, qualifications, and experience relevant to the position
2. A full curriculum vitae (CV) - detailing education, awards, publications, research experience, etc.
3. Contact information for three professional references

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. The starting date can be as soon as a selection is made.

For questions or additional information, please contact Dr. Alan Liu at alan.liu at erau.edu.


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