December 20, 2021 ktindiana

SHINE Newsletter – November 2021

The first SHINE newsletter mailed out in November 2021 from the new MailChimp-powered mailing list.

https://mailchi.mp/6ff054ad43de/shine-newsletter-november-2021?e=[UNIQID]

Dear SHINE community, 

You are reading the new SHINE Newsletter! This new format aims to keep our community informed about the coming workshop, any job ads for early-career you may publish, NSF notifications or any other things happening in our community.  Below you can fin the content for this first publication. Hope you enjoy!
At the bottom of the newsletter there is a link to subscribe/unsubscribe, don’t hesitate to forward this newsletter to your colleagues. Please send us any input or feedback about this newsletter to shinecommunity99@gmail.com.

Cheers,

Teresa Nieves, Coordinator
Noé Lugaz, Chair

In this newsletter:

  1. The SHINE coordinator position. 
  2. New Child Care Grant Program
  3. Status of the coming workshop
  4. Updates in the steering committee. 
  5. Changes in the Students Representatives.
  6. NSF Updates

SHINE Coordinator 2023-25

The Steering Committee has decided to make this position of workshop coordinator open and competitive in the community. The current workshop coordinator is Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla. The 2022 workshop will be a transition workshop for the in/out coordinators with main duties taken care by Teresa, but also providing an occasion for a smooth transition and training for the incoming workshop coordinator. The position is in charge of the logistics of running the workshop, including proposing the venue to the rest of the steering committee, organizing the transportation of students. The workshop coordinator is also a member of the SHINE steering committee and participate in the science discussion as well. Ability to serve as the PI of NSF grants is a requirement of the position. 
The SHINE workshop coordinator should have attended several SHINE meetings and preferably helped organize a session at SHINE.
If you are interested, send an email to shinecommunity99@gmail.com with a 2 pages bio before the end of the year, including information about previous SHINE attendance and SHINE session organization and the answer to the following questions: 
– Why are you interested in the position of SHINE workshop coordinator?
– What particular skill sets would you bring as the SHINE workshop coordinator? 
– What was your least/most favorite SHINE venue and why?

New Child Care Grant Program

Child Care Grant Program will help to SHINE members scientists attending to the summer workshop to support the childcare when traveling with family. The recipients will be responsible for arranging their own childcare and the coordinator will connect the families and will facilitate the access to the local resources. 
We anticipate to award ten grants of up to $400 to each applicant. The recipient will need to supply a receipt or other proof of payment to obtain the reimbursement. If you want to apply to the Childcare Grant Program, please write a short paragraph to explain why you need the grant (1000 words) in the workshop registration form.

Status on the 2022 workshop

  • Dates: June 26 to July 1, Honolulu, Hawaii  
  • Venue: Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach (link))
  • Back-to-back with GEM (June 19-24). The join session, overlap format and student day are still TBD.
  • Registration and other deadlines will be send out early in 2022.
  • Child Care Grant Program – Deadline with the Early registration.  

Updates in the Steering Committee

New members:
– Chadi Salem, UCB/SSL
– Silvina Guidoni, AU
– Maher Dayeh, SwRI

Departing steering committee members (Thank you!!!): – Marc DeRosa (LMSAL), Ben Maruca (UDel), Kathy Reeves (CfA/Harvard)

Changes in the Students Representatives

  • Michael Terres, new Student Representative (CSPAR/UAH, Huntsville). Michael is joining CR Gilly from LASP/CU-Boulder, now Senior Student Representative, who is continuing for a second year.
  • Chris Bert (UMich) is the departing student representative (Thank you!).

NSF Updates


Many changes occurred in the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences over the past year! In particular, I would like to thank Ilia Roussev for his excellent service to the SHINE community as your program director over the past eight years. Ilia started a new position as Executive Officer at the Space Sciences Lab at the University of California Berkeley. We wish him well in his new role! I am currently running the Solar-Terrestrial (STR) and SHINE programs so please direct any questions to me at lwinter@nsf.gov. I am pleased to be supporting this great community and my SHINE-related research included studies of solar energetic particle events and solar flares (in X-rays and gamma-rays). I am also the Program Director for the Magnetospheric Physics and GEM programs. We anticipate having an opening in the future for the STR/SHINE Program Director so please contact me if you have an interest in supporting this great community in this role! NSF has just been ranked the 5th best place to work in the government so consider joining our fantastic team.
 
Several exciting developments occurred this year that are of benefit to the SHINE community. We in Geospace are very excited about a new solicitation for a Grand Challenge in Integrated Geospace/ANSWERS. The call was due in August and the review is in progress. We anticipate making 2-3 awards of up to $900,000 and 2-3 awards of up to $2,500,000 each. We are hoping that these awards will make substantial contributions to understanding the chain from “Sun to mud” and stimulate new collaborations and ideas. Additionally, two “new” solar facilities are now being supported by AGS – the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array and the Simpson Neutron Monitoring Network. We look forward to the great discoveries the community will make through these facilities.
 
New and exciting changes may be coming to NSF. The President’s 2022 budget proposes an increase to $10.7 billion for NSF, the largest proposed increase. Additionally, among the new priorities for NSF, our new Director has included climate research which is housed in large part within our Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. I encourage the SHINE community to think towards how we can contribute to understanding and predicting climate given the potential opportunities and the global imperative to seeking solutions to climate change. Another important and relevant pillar for NSF priorities is inclusivity. I commend the work that the SHINE community already is doing in this area and encourage you to keep at it!
 
At NSF, we are gearing up for the next Decadal process. We thank the SHINE community for your involvement and service to the community in these early stages. Of most importance, we encourage SHINE members to actively engage through writing white papers and volunteering for Decadal committees. This is an important process that informs our decisions in the coming decade about science and research infrastructure priorities. Especially important are that the Decadal make recommendations for the next large facilities (mid-scale and higher). Without community support from the Decadal it is difficult for these highly competitive proposals to get selected as they are competing against the best ideas from all the scientific areas supported by NSF. This Decadal will also include for the first time an assessment of the State of the Profession, which will evaluate the health and vitality of the solar and space physics community, identify workforce challenges and solutions, identify concerns regarding DEI, and make recommendations to the agencies.  
 
The SHINE community support through the AGS STR program was at a record high level last fiscal year, providing more than $10 M in funding for solar-terrestrial science. Your science is being supported through faculty fellowships (CAREER), post-doctoral research fellowships (PRFs), and research grants to the PI community. To further support the community and growth in emerging areas, the NSF SHINE solicitation is being re-issued. The SHINE solicitation will have three focused topics:
 
(1) Inter-disciplinary SHINE science. To spark research connections between SHINE sub-fields, proposals bridging SHINE disciplines such as studies of connections between the low and high corona, helioseismology and the emergence of active regions, and coronal hole boundaries and the solar wind. 
(2) Connections of the heliosphere with Earth’s climate. This includes understanding how solar variability affects the magnetosphere, the lower atmosphere, and detailed studies of longer term trends between the Sun, terrestrial weather, and Earth’s climate. 
(3) Modeling and/or observational projects incorporating machine learning/artificial intelligence techniques. Observational data sets may be included from any relevant source/federal agency but are particularly encouraged to include NSF funded observations (e.g., Expanded Owens Valley Array, Simpson Neutron Monitor, ground-based telescopes).
 
Proposals will now be open both for SHINE and the STR program. Early career investigators and those from under-represented groups in STEM are encouraged to apply. Please contact me if you have any questions!
 
Sincerely,
Dr. Lisa Winter
Program Director, Solar-Terrestrial Research and SHINE
NSF GEO/AGS