[SPA] SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume XXVIII, Issue 19

[Newsletter Editor]

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER
Volume XXVIII, Issue 19
Apr.02,2021

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Table of Contents

1. Nominations and Reviewers sought for Named Lectures, SPA and Union Awards

2. COSPAR Task Group: Constellation of Small Satellites

3. HMCS Potential Partnership

4. MEETING: Online Radio Heliophysics Catch-up – 10-13 May 2021 (NEW DATES) - Zoom - Final Announcement!

5. MEETING: SSI Virtual Conference: "Applications of Statistical Methods and Machine Learning in the Space Sciences”, 17-21 May 2021 -- Reminder

6. Help Shape Heliophysics Data Science ahead of Helio 2050

7. Pre-Helio 2050 Meetings: Magnetosphere-Atmosphere Interactions

8. Magnetosphere Online Seminar Series

9. JOB OPENING: Postdoctoral Position in Magnetic Reconnection research associated with NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS)

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


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Nominations and Reviewers sought for Named Lectures, SPA and Union Awards

From: Geoff Reeves (geoff at reevesresearch.org)

It is AGU awards and recognition season again. The deadline for submitting nominations for both SPA and Union (all AGU) awards is April 15. 

Award Committees: We have full review committees for most of our SPA awards but we are still looking for members of three committees: The Basu United States Early Career award, the Fred L. Scarf award, and the Carrington Education and Public Outreach award.

Please send an email expressing interest to spa.leadership.team at gmail.com

Award Nominations: SPA has several awards to recognize outstanding achievement.
The Fred L. Scarf Award recognizes recent graduates for outstanding dissertation research.
There are two Sunanda & Satimay Basu Awards. One for US early career researchers and one for International early career researchers.
There is also the SPA Richard Carrington (SPARC) Education and Public Outreach Award
(The Space Weather & Nonlinear Waves and Processes Prize is not offered this year but will resume in 2022)

Information about the awards and nomination process are at:
https://www.agu.org/Honor-and-Recognize/Honors/Section-Awards/Scarf-Award 
https://www.agu.org/Honor-and-Recognize/Honors/Section-Awards/Basu-US-Award
https://www.agu.org/Honor-and-Recognize/Honors/Section-Awards/Basu-International-Award
https://www.agu.org/Honor-and-Recognize/Honors/Section-Awards/SPARC-Award

Named Lectures: SPA has four lecture series named after preeminent scientists: Eugene Parker, Marcel Nicolet, James Van Allen, and William B. Hanson. The Hanson Lecture kicked off in 2020 and is given every year while each of the others is given every two out of three years. This year we seek nominations for the Hanson, Parker and Van Allen lectures.
For more information see: https://connect.agu.org/spa/awards/lectureships

Nominations for the SPA named lectures are simple and only require an email to spa.leadership.team at gmail.com. Please let us know (in a few sentences) why your nominee deserves the honor and why they would give a compelling presentation that would be of interest to the entire SPA community.

In all SPA honors and recognition we strive for diversity, equality, and inclusion as we recognize our colleagues’ outstanding accomplishments.


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COSPAR Task Group: Constellation of Small Satellites

From: Daniel Baker (daniel.baker at lasp.colorado.edu)

The Task Group for an effective Constellation of Small Satellites (TGCSS) reported in several ways to the COSPAR community at the recently concluded 43rd COSPAR Assembly (2021) in Sydney. Progress made since the Task Group’s formation in March 2020 was discussed in five different Assembly symposia and in two Town Hall breakout sessions. The initial TG phase of laying out a framework for a smallsat constellation has now been concluded [see COSPAR News nr. 5 (August 2020)] and a second phase was authorized in the Assembly discussions.

The clear consensus from the Sydney meeting was for the Task Group to now pick a subset of space weather themes (Ionosphere monitoring, energetic particle measurements and Earth atmosphere observation being most prominent) and then move forward with defining high-level mission concepts. This would include agreeing on science goals and defining instruments, estimating the number of satellites, specifying the orbital planes, and several related program elements.

The following steps to achieve these objectives are now part of our plan going forward:
1. The TG will determine the program science objectives and is herewith providing a call for mission approaches (to fulfill such objectives) from the worldwide community;

2. The TG with such input will then proceed promptly to define the mission, instruments and measurements to be made; 

3. The TG may consider hosting an Advances in Space Research special issue on these objectives and mission concepts. However, more immediate and prompt electronic mechanisms and methods for mobilizing the Phase 2 activities are required; and

4. The TG further will now engage strongly with the major space agencies of the world and with industry partners to line up access to space, constellation communication infrastructure, data sharing protocols, and other mission elements as soon as practicable. 

It is planned that several theme-specific discussions will take place in parallel in the April 2021 timeframe, but there will be one overall COSPAR constellation of small satellites. The present TG members will serve as a “Steering Committee” to assure coherent and consistent functioning of the overall COSPAR CSS program. Those who would like to join either the ionosphere, energetic particle, or atmosphere theme area discussions should contact. A SlackTM channel and GitHubTM platform for document sharing and discussions will be set up in early April.


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HMCS Potential Partnership

From: Dana Hurley, George Ho (george.ho at jhuapl.edu)

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is building new partnerships with the scientific community to advance bold goals in NASA’s Heliophysics program through the Heliophysics Mission Concept Studies (HMCS) Announcement of Opportunity (AO). APL is one of the community design centers that would like to help proposers to carry out the point design for new mission concept. The APL Concurrent Engineering Laboratory (ACE Lab) employs a full suite of tools and an extensive library of previous missions and concept documentation to produce rapid and collaborative mission concept evolutions. More information of ACE Lab can be found here: https://civspace.jhuapl.edu/engineering/apl-labs-facilities/ace-laboratory 

Members of the community interested in partnering with APL for their proposal should contact Dana Hurley or George Ho (Civil Space Mission Area Strategic Integration Leads – Dana.Hurley at jhuapl.edu; George.Ho at jhuapl.edu) by Monday April 5th 2021 with an indication of your intent to propose and any questions that you have. We anticipate providing a few days of baseline engineering support during proposal formulation for up to 10 concepts, based on available time and resources.  If the demand is higher, we will provide boilerplate materials for additional concepts to aid the community as much as possible. Dana or George can answer any institutional questions and outline the path forward to submit a one-page science-based abstract by the deadline of Friday April 9th 2021.


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MEETING: Online Radio Heliophysics Catch-up – 10-13 May 2021 (NEW DATES) - Zoom - Final Announcement!

From: Mario M. Bisi (Mario.Bisi at stfc.ac.uk)

Dear Colleagues.

Due to the ongoing pandemic situation with COVID-19, gatherings are still very much discouraged (or not possible) and therefore meetings must be moved online.

The radio heliophysics catch-up meeting/workshop (please see: http://orhc.cbk.waw.pl/wp/) aims to gather online a worldwide community from wide radio heliophysics domains and make a room for light, informal meeting where scientific and technical discussions can take place together with any updates on activities and progress made by individual groups around the world.  This is aimed at the PhD researcher and above.  It will cover work from relevant COSPAR ISWAT teams (see: https://iswat-cospar.org/) as well as those just working within our community.  The meeting will address the variety of topics including: IPS data analyses, their assimilation in 3-D Heliospheric tomographic and MHD models, Heliospheric Faraday rotation (FR) investigations, ionospheric scintillation studies, and act as a follow-up for current and upcoming space missions like Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter.  The planned four-day virtual meeting on Zoom will give opportunity to establish closer working relations and share experience across different methods of radio data analysis as well as better plan and coordinate our fit into the COSPAR ISWAT structure.

The meeting will be held 10-13 May 2021 (NEW DATES) (across four days), and the core sessions each day will be three hours in duration running 13:00UT-16:00UT where additional discussion sessions are held earlier and later on some of the days and/or as needed during the meeting.  The meeting is aimed to take on the flavour of an informal workshop with plenty of time for discussion, hands-on collaborations/breakouts, and planning going forward.

For more information as it becomes available and to register (there is NO REGISTRATION FEE), please go to: http://orhc.cbk.waw.pl/wp/ - the closing deadline for both registration and abstract submission is: 07 April 2021.

Very many thanks, and we look forward to seeing you "virtually" in mid-May...

Mario.

On behalf of the Online Organising Committee (OOC):
Mario M. Bisi, UKRI STFC RAL Space
Barbara Matyjasiak, CBK PAN
Richard Fallows, ASTRON
Hanna Rothkaehl, CBK PAN


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MEETING: SSI Virtual Conference: "Applications of Statistical Methods and Machine Learning in the Space Sciences”, 17-21 May 2021 -- Reminder

From: Bala Poduval (bpoduval at spacescience.org)

Virtual Conference on "Applications of Statistical Methods and Machine Learning in the Space Sciences”, 17-21 May 2021

W have extended the due date for abstract submission until 10 April 2021.

Please visit: http://spacescience.org/workshops/mlconference2021.php for further details and updates.

Bala Poduval for the SOC: M. Balikhin, J. Borovsky, R. D'Amicis, M. Dainotti, M. Georgoulis, J. Johnson, K. Pitman, B. Poduval, R. Shuping, O. Verkhoglyadova, S. Wing, P. Wintoft.


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Help Shape Heliophysics Data Science ahead of Helio 2050

From: Ryan McGranaghan, Allison Jaynes, Lindsay Goodwin, Ian Cohen, Katie Sage-Garcia (ryan.mcgranaghan at gmail.com)

Dear Colleagues,

The Heliophysics 2050 Workshop is quickly approaching (May 3-7), and we are convening pre-workshop discussions to make sure the community is being heard to guide the field over the next three decades. 

We would like to invite you to pre-workshop discussions on the theme of 'Heliophysics Data Science.' The goal of these sessions will be to synthesize the scientific priorities in this field and discuss ways in which data science can contribute to transformational research across Helio and Earth sciences. The results of these sessions will be available to the community for possible use during the Heliophysics 2050 sessions: Expanding the Frontiers (May 6th) and Heliophysics as a Community (May 7th). Additionally, this activity will hopefully facilitate connections for White Papers to be written as input to the upcoming Heliophysics Division Decadal Survey.

The first discussion will be held Monday April 5 at 3 PM EST/12 PM PST. Please feel welcome to drop in as you can, even if you cannot attend the entire session. Pre-registration is requested at this link (https://forms.gle/fnaBFU56SNmBmSQL9), from which a Zoom link will be provided.

Topics will include, but are by no means limited to: 
- Linked Data - Ways of structuring data for usability and discoverability
- FAIR Data - Findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of data
- Data-Driven Science - AI and data science methodologies applied to enable science research
- AI in Engineering – Applications of AI and data science methodologies applied to support engineering applications across science, human exploration, and missions
- Computation in Heliophysics - Considerations of high performance computing in Heliophysics science

Only topics that we emerge as a community and champion will have the potential to impact our science over the coming decades, so provide your input to the Google Document (https://tinyurl.com/helio2050-ds) and join us for the live discussion! 

Looking forward,
Ryan McGranaghan on behalf of
Allison Jaynes
Lindsay Goodwin
Ian Cohen
Katie Garcia-Sage


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Pre-Helio 2050 Meetings: Magnetosphere-Atmosphere Interactions

From: Allison N Jaynes (allison-n-jaynes at uiowa.edu)

Dear Colleagues,

As part of various meetings leading up to the Heliophysics 2050 workshop (May 3-7), we are hosting a special series of sessions to discuss the cross-cutting theme of magnetosphere-atmosphere interactions through particle precipitation. Our hope is to bring together magnetospheric researchers with atmospheric researchers to develop the compelling science questions that should be answered by 2050. The goal of these sessions will be to synthesize the scientific priorities in this field and discuss ways in which transformational research can come about from inter-disciplinary study across Helio and Earth sciences. The results of these sessions will be available to the community for possible use during the Heliophysics 2050 session: Expanding the Frontiers (May 6th). This activity will hopefully facilitate connections for White Papers to be written as input to the upcoming Heliophysics Division Decadal Survey. 

The sessions will be held over the next 4 weeks at varying times, to accommodate individual schedules. Additionally, the meetings will be broken up by career stage, with the first meeting open only to all students, post-docs and researchers/faculty within 5 years of their terminal degree. The second meeting will be open to mid-career and senior researchers, with early-career welcome to join. The third meeting will be open to all and will serve to summarize and distill the discussions of the previous meetings into a coherent and compelling set of scientific goals and a plan for how we achieve those goals. 

At this time, we invite all students, post-docs and researchers within 5 years post-degree to join the first session on Thursday, April 8th from 3:30-5pm Eastern Time. Please feel welcome to drop in as you can, even if you cannot attend the entire session. Pre-registration is requested at the link below, from which a Zoom link will be provided. 

https://uiowa.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwofuqhqjotEtYEjj_QBk7uxD3kNPVd8ysd 


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Magnetosphere Online Seminar Series

From: Jason Shuster (magnetosphere.seminars at gmail.com)

We invite you to join us every Monday at 12pm (ET) for the weekly Magnetosphere Online Seminar Series.

Due to Easter weekend and the upcoming MMS meeting, there will be no seminars on April 5 and April 12. 

We will resume on April 19 with Harald Frey who will discuss Optical Instruments. A link to join the seminar via Zoom or YouTube can be found on our home page:
https://msolss.github.io/MagSeminars/
The password to join the Zoom seminar is: Mag at 1

You can view the current 2021 schedule here:
https://msolss.github.io/MagSeminars/schedule.html

Add your name to our mailing list here:
https://msolss.github.io/MagSeminars/mail-list.html

Read about previous talks here:
https://msolss.github.io/MagSeminars/blog.html


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JOB OPENING: Postdoctoral Position in Magnetic Reconnection research associated with NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS)

From: Yi-Hsin Liu (Yi-Hsin.Liu at Dartmouth.edu)

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral position at Dartmouth College to work with the group of Prof. Yi-Hsin Liu on computational studies of magnetic reconnection, in collaboration with experimentalists of NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS).

The successful applicant will contribute to a vigorous research program addressing exciting questions about magnetic reconnection at Earth’s magnetosphere. The research will primarily focus on using kinetic simulations to interpret the high cadence observation of MMS, developing analytical models to further the understanding of fundamental reconnection physics and its coupling to other magnetospheric/space plasma phenomena, such as bursty bulk flows, shocks, instabilities/waves/turbulence, and particle accelerations.

Applicants should have a Ph.D. in plasma physics, space physics or plasma astrophysics (or expect to complete the degree by the start of the position). Experience in Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations and computational plasmas physics are strongly preferred. The appointment will be for an initial period of two years with the possibility of an additional year. The preferred start date is November 2021 or earlier. The position includes funds for travel, publications, and computing, and offers a competitive salary with health benefits.

Complete applications should include a CV and publications list, a brief statement of research interests, and three letters of reference. All materials should be submitted in PDF format on Interfolio (https://apply.interfolio.com/85907). Applications received by 15th August 2021 will receive full consideration, although applications will be accepted until the position is filled. For questions, please email Yi-Hsin.Liu at Dartmouth.edu.

Related URLs: 
Liu's Plasma Physics Group: https://yhliu10.wixsite.com/yhliu/research
Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS):https://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov/

About Dartmouth:
Dartmouth is a member of the Ivy League and is one of the oldest universities in the United States. The Department of Physics & Astronomy has a range of active research programs in space and plasma physics, astronomy, cosmology, and nuclear, quantum, and condensed matter physics. Dartmouth is located in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the beautiful Upper Valley of the Connecticut River two hours from Boston, and is consistently ranked one of the best small towns in which to live in the country.

Dartmouth College is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion. We prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, veteran status, marital status, or any other legally protected status. Applications by members of all underrepresented groups are encouraged.


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NOTE: Due to the large number of SPA-related sessions at major conferences, the SPA Newsletter can no longer accept announcement requests for individual sessions at AGU, AOGS, COSPAR, EGU, or IAGA Meetings. Titles and web links (if available) of these sessions will be distributed in a special issue of the Newsletter before the abstract deadline.

SPA Web Site: http://spa.agu.org/

SPA Newsletter Editorial Team: Peter Chi (Editor), Guan Le (Co-Editor), Sharon Uy, Marjorie Sowmendran, and Kevin Addison

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