MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

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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
Full details can be found here: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/royal-astronomical-society-unveils-2023-award-winners.

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.

SSAP roadmap update

The STFC Solar System Advisory Panel (SSAP) is undertaking a review of the "Roadmap for Solar System Research", to be presented to STFC Science Board later this year. This is expected to be a substantial update of the Roadmap, as the last full review was carried out in 2012, with a light-touch update in 2015.

The current version of the SSAP Roadmap can be found here.

In carrying out this review, we will take into account changes in the international landscape, and advances in instrumentation, technology, theory, and modelling work. 

As such, we solicit your input and comments on the existing roadmap and any material we should consider in this revision. This consultation will close on Wednesday 14 July 2021 and SSAP will try to give a preliminary assessment of findings at NAM.

This consultation is seeking the view of all members of our community and we particularly encourage early career researchers to respond. Specifically, we invite:

Comments and input on the current "Roadmap for Solar System Research" via the survey by clicking here.

Short "white papers" on science investigations (including space missions, ground-based experimental facilities, or computing infrastructure) and impact and knowledge exchange (e.g. societal and community impact, technology development). Please use the pro-forma sent to the MIST mailing list and send your response to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Quo vadis interim board

 

A white paper called "Quo vadis, European space weather community" has been published in J. Space Weather Space Clim. which outlines plans for the creation of an organisation to represent the European space weather community.
Since it was published, an online event of the same name was organised on 17 March 2021. A “Quo Vadis Interim Board” was then set up, to establish a mechanism for this discussion, which will go on until June 21st.

The Interim Board is composed of volunteers from the community in Europe. Its role is to coordinate the efforts so that the space weather (and including space climate) European community can:

  1. Organise itself
  2. Elect people to represent them

To reach this goal, the Interim Board is inviting anyone interested in and outside Europe to join the “Quo Vadis European Space Weather Community ” discussion forum.

Eligible European Space Weather Community members should register to the “Electoral Census” to be able to vote in June for the final choice of organisation.

This effort will be achieved through different actions indicated on the Quo Vadis webpage and special Slack workspace.

List of seminar speakers

The following is a list of people who have registered their interest in giving seminars on their research interests at other institutions. The aims of this list are:

  1. To improve the visibility, and awareness, of the work done by different researchers and research groups.
  2. To assist local organisers of regular institutional seminar series with suggestions for speakers, particularly PhD students and postdocs who may be less widely known in the community.
  3. To assist the science organising committees of conferences and meetings, as above.

If you would like to appear on the below list or you would like to edit the details that appear on this page, please fill in this google form. We note that there is no obligation for the people listed below to accept invitations extended by MIST institutions. The list is also available in this spreadsheet.

 (Last updated on 03 November 2020.)

Speakers

  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Numerical experiments of wave-particle interactions in the inner magnetosphere; basic theory of collisionless plasma equilibria and stability (current sheets and flux tubes).
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Dayside magnetospheric dynamics at Earth; transient kinetic phenomena in the foreshock, bow shock and magnetosheath; magnetospheric ULF waves and resonances; magnetospheric variability; novel analysis techniques; sonification of data; public engagement.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — high latitude thermosphere-ionopshere coupling (mainly the effects of ion drag and the timescales on which it acts); the resultant Joule heating; its variations due to multiple criteria (aurora/neutral winds).
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Machine learning; solar wind; radiation belts; space weather; big data techniques.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Interactions with the ionosphere; radar observations; satellite observations; community programming.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Type II solar radio burst band-splitting.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Birkeland currents (aka field-aligned currents); AMPERE observations; substorms; flux transfer events (FTEs); northward IMF.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Heliospheric physics; evolution of coronal mass ejections (CMEs); magnetic clouds; solar wind; solar transients.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Investigating the interaction between the solar wind and the Martian plasma environment.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Magnetospheric physics; ionospheric physics; space weather; magnetic reconnection; magnetohydrodynamics (MHD); computer simulations
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Saturn's magnetosphere; end of the Cassini mission; Saturn's periodicities; large-scale currents systems; field-aligned current systems
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Field-aligned currents; the Jovian magnetodisc.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Ionosphere; magnetosphere; solar quiet currents; equatorial electrojets; geomagnetic field.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Mars plasma system, ionosphere, space weather.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Substorms; ring current energisation; Van Allen observations; field line eigenfrequencies.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Electrical current systems of the magnetosphere (field-aligned currents); dynamics of the terrestrial magnetosphere; sub-auroral polarization streams (SAPS); magnetospheric and ionospheric convection.
  • Andy Smith (MSSL/UCL, PDRA) — Ground impact of Space Weather, Classification and Forecasting; Substorm dynamics and onset, conjugate ground and space observations.
  • David Stansby (MSSL/UCL, PDRA) — Solar wind, in-situ/remote sensing connections, inner heliosphere.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling; response time-scales to solar wind driving; SuperDARN observations; auroral observations.
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. — Heliospheric physics; solar wind; plasma turbulence; collisionless heating; non-linear plasma physics; kinetic physics; micro-instabilities; statistical data analysis; hybrid/particle-in-cell simulations.