MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

Latest news

Winners of Rishbeth Prizes 2023

We are pleased to announce that following Spring MIST 2023 the Rishbeth Prizes this year are awarded to Sophie Maguire (University of Birmingham) and Rachel Black (University of Exeter).

Sophie wins the prize for the best MIST student talk which was entitled “Large-scale plasma structures and scintillation in the high-latitude ionosphere”. Rachel wins the best MIST poster prize, for a poster entitled “Investigating different methods of chorus wave identification within the radiation belts”. Congratulations to both Sophie and Rachel!

As prize winners, Sophie and Rachel will be invited to write articles for Astronomy & Geophysics, which we look forward to reading.

MIST Council extends their thanks to the University of Birmingham for hosting the Spring MIST meeting 2023, and to the Royal Astronomical Society for their generous and continued support of the Rishbeth Prizes.

Nominations for MIST Council

We are pleased to open nominations for MIST Council. There are two positions available (detailed below), and elected candidates would join Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Andy Smith, Maria-Theresia Walach, and Emma Woodfield on Council. The nomination deadline is Friday 26 May.

Council positions open for nomination

  • MIST Councillor - a three year term (2023 - 2026). Everyone is eligible.
  • MIST Student Representative - a one year term (2023 - 2024). Only PhD students are eligible. See below for further details.

About being on MIST Council


If you would like to find out more about being on Council and what it can involve, please feel free to email any of us (email contacts below) with any of your informal enquiries! You can also find out more about MIST activities at mist.ac.uk.

Rosie Hodnett (current MIST Student Representative) has summarised their experience on MIST Council below:
"I have really enjoyed being the PhD representative on the MIST council and would like to encourage other PhD students to nominate themselves for the position. Some of the activities that I have been involved in include leading the organisation of Autumn MIST, leading the online seminar series and I have had the opportunity to chair sessions at conferences. These are examples of what you could expect to take part in whilst being on MIST council, but the council will welcome any other ideas you have. If anyone has any questions, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..”

How to nominate

If you would like to stand for election or you are nominating someone else (with their agreement!) please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 26 May. If there is a surplus of nominations for a role, then an online vote will be carried out with the community. Please include the following details in the nomination:
  • Name
  • Position (Councillor/Student Rep.)
  • Nomination Statement (150 words max including a bit about the nominee and your reasons for nominating. This will be circulated to the community in the event of a vote.)
 
MIST Council contact details

Rosie Hodnett - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Mathew Owens - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Beatriz Sanchez-Cano - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jasmine Kaur Sandhu - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Andy Smith - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Maria-Theresia Walach - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Emma Woodfield - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
MIST Council email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

RAS Awards

The Royal Astronomical Society announced their award recipients last week, and MIST Council would like to congratulate all that received an award. In particular, we would like to highlight the following members of the MIST Community, whose work has been recognised:
  • Professor Nick Achilleos (University College London) - Chapman Medal
  • Dr Oliver Allanson (University of Birmingham) - Fowler Award
  • Dr Ravindra Desai (University of Warwick) - Winton Award & RAS Higher Education Award
  • Professor Marina Galand (Imperial College London) - James Dungey Lecture

New MIST Council 2021-

There have been some recent ingoings and outgoings at MIST Council - please see below our current composition!:

  • Oliver Allanson, Exeter (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2024 -- Chair
  • Beatriz Sánchez-Cano, Leicester (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2024
  • Mathew Owens, Reading (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2023
  • Jasmine Sandhu, Northumbria (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2023 -- Vice-Chair
  • Maria-Theresia Walach, Lancaster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2022
  • Sarah Badman, Lancaster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2022
    (co-opted in 2021 in lieu of outgoing councillor Greg Hunt)

Charter amendment and MIST Council elections open

Nominations for MIST Council open today and run through to 8 August 2021! Please feel free to put yourself forward for election – the voting will open shortly after the deadline and run through to the end of August. The positions available are:

  • 2 members of MIST Council
  • 1 student representative (pending the amendment below passing)

Please email nominations to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 8 August 2021. Thank you!

Charter amendment

We also move to amend the following articles of the MIST Charter as demonstrated below. Bold type indicates additions and struck text indicates deletions. Please respond to the email on the MIST mailing list before 8 August 2021 if you would like to object to the amendment; MIST Charter provides that it will pass if less than 10% of the mailing list opposes its passing. 

4.1  MIST council is the collective term for the officers of MIST and consists of six individuals and one student representative from the MIST community.

5.1 Members of MIST council serve terms of three years, except for the student representative who serves a term of one year.

5.2 Elections will be announced at the Spring MIST meeting and voting must begin within two months of the Spring MIST meeting. Two slots on MIST council will be open in a given normal election year, alongside the student representative.

5.10 Candidates for student representative must not have submitted their PhD thesis at the time that nominations close.

NAM at the University of Bath postponed until 2021

The RAS have announced that NAM will be held at the University of Bath in July 2021, and a blog post on the University of Bath website goes into details on this

MIST will be present at NAM at University of Bath to help celebrate the Royal Astronomical Society's bicentennial, which will still be celebrated at Bath.

No plans to replace the 2020 NAM with a virtual presence have yet been announced, beyond the following excerpt from the blog post above.

There is no doubt that physical meetings will always play a part in the way scientists network and collaborate, but we are also eager to explore digital conference platforms, as we believe remote conferencing will be an important step forward in giving our participants dependable access to talks and meetings. Such virtual meetings hold great promise in making meetings both more inclusive and more environmentally sustainable. Inclusivity and reducing our carbon footprint are priorities for both the RAS and for the University of Bath.

MIST online seminar and business lunch

Today sees the inaugural MIST online seminar and the 2020 MIST business lunch taking place over Zoom. If you would like to attend, details of how to connect to the Zoom are available on the MIST Mailing List and Slack.

Daniel Verscharen (MSSL, UCL) will be talking on the topic of Kinetic physics, collisions, and turbulence in the solar wind: a multi-scale perspective from 11am to 11:50am. If you'd like to read his abstract, or look at the list of upcoming MIST seminar speakers, visit the MIST online seminars page.

Business Lunch

The business lunch will begin at noon, following a ten minute break after Daniel's seminar, and the agenda is as follows:

  1. NAM rescheduled
  2. Online Autumn MIST 2020
  3. Online discussion meetings
  4. Online summer schools
  5. Inclusion of ED&I in STFC core summer school curriculum
  6. Anonymous reporting tool
  7. MIST elections
  8. Online seminar series
  9. MIST Awards Taskforce
  10. SSAP
  11. Any other business

UKSP Specialist Discussion Day

In lieu of NAM happening this year, UKSP are holding a day-long discussion meeting on 30 July. For more details, see the UKSP website.

There are three sessions during the day:

  1. Open session on solar physics, featuring invited speakers David Kuridze and Lauren Doyle. This session is for all contributions describing advances relating to physical processes occurring from the interior to the outer atmosphere, based on space- or ground-based observations, simulations or theory.
  2. Sun-Heliosphere session, featuring invited speakers Stephanie Yardley and David Stansby. This session will discuss the connections between the Sun and the heliosphere: in-situ and remote-sensing observations, and related theory and modelling work, including contributions that discuss results from Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter.
  3. Online poster session covering all solar/heliosphere topics.

SuperDARN workshop 2020

The SuperDARN 2020 workshop will be held in South Africa on 31 May–5 June 2020. For more information, visit the conference web site. Abstract submissions are currently open with a deadline of 10 April 2020, and registrations are also open with a deadline of 30 April 2020 for early-bird registration and 10 May for all registration. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The location will be the Sani Pass hotel in the beautiful Drakensberg mountains. A single shuttle bus will be provided on 31 May and 5 June to/from this remote location. The venue is at high altitude in the winter, so expect freezing but dry conditions at night, yet warm and sunny conditions in the daytime. Those venturing to the top of Sani pass into the Kingdom of Lesotho can expect freezing conditions all day with possible snow (with no skiing), but the highest pub in Africa has a solution for this.

 

System-scale observations and modelling of solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling

As a result of COVID-19, the below meeting has been cancelled, and will appear in the 2020/21 round.

A RAS G discussion meeting on “System-scale observations and modelling of solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling” will be held at the Royal Astronomical Society on 17 April 2020 from 10:00–15:30. The registration fee is free for RAS members, £5 for students, or £15 for non-student non-members.

The invited speaker will be Colin Waters (University of Newcastle, Australia).

If you would like to submit an abstract, please complete the abstract submission form by 20 March 2020.

Read more: System-scale observations and modelling of solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling