Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

Services, Roles, and Activities

• Secretary, SPD/AAS, 2015 - 2018
• Scientific Editor, AAS Journals, 2017 - current

Professional Experience and Positions

• Council Member, Solar Observatories Council, AURA 2013-2016
• Assistant Astronomer, National Solar Observatory 2006-2009
• Project Scientist, High Altitude Observatory, NCAR, 2003-2006
• ASP Postdoc, NCAR, 2001-2003
• Stanford University, Postdoc, 2000-2001

Candidate Statement

I'd be delighted to work with the AAS SPD council in the capacity of Secretary in order to ensure delivery of the SolarNews newsletter to the community, take notes at the council meetings, set up the information for SPD elections and keep track of membership, etc. I'm happy to do other work as needed to serve the SDP council and the greater solar physics community.

Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

• Structure and dynamics of solar flaring regions, active regions, and the quiet Sun, including magnetic field, density, and particle diagnostics from radio, optical/IR, EUV and X-ray observations.
• Radio emission from the Sun and stars at all radio frequencies from metric to mm wavelengths.
• Radio imaging spectroscopy of the Sun.
• Radio interferometry instrumentation and techniques.
• Radio and X-ray observations and modeling of particle acceleration and transport mechanisms in the solar atmosphere.
• Space Weather effects of solar radio emission on communication and navigation systems.
• Physics, astronomy, and space-weather education at all levels (K-12, undergraduate and graduate).

Services, Roles, and Activities

Professional Experience and Positions

• ALMA Proposal Review Committee Chair, Panel 5, Sun and Evolved Stars, 2016-2018
• Astronomy & Astrophysics Decadal Survey, Solar Physics Panel, 1999
• Solar & Space Physics Decadal Survey, Education Panel, 2002

Candidate Statement

I am honored to be nominated for the position as Vice Chair of the SPD. I have been a member of the division since 1982, and served for two terms as Treasurer, which at that time also had responsibility for the membership directory. I enjoyed my time on the executive committee, and was very active in the doings of the division, including preparation for SPD meetings from the financial perspective. Since that time, I have devoted much of my efforts to developing a strong solar radio group within the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at NJIT. I have considerable experience with both NASA and NSF funding, and the evolving pressures on researchers seeking funding from those agencies. Under my direction, we have recently succeeded in completing the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA), which is a new, solar-dedicated, community radio facility that is returning truly revolutionary results. Now that the development effort is largely over, I am happy to have the opportunity to return to a role in the SPD.

One of the duties of the Vice Chair is to help organize the division meetings. I have played various roles in organizing meetings both as SOC and LOC member, including co-leading the organization of an NSF Earthcube End-User workshop on solar, heliospheric, magnetospheric, and ionospheric research. I am familiar with all aspects of such meetings, ranging from the organization of the meeting itself, to sorting of abstracts, to proposing and organizing sessions, etc. I am particularly focused on keeping costs as low as possible to reduce registration fees.

Of course, the Vice Chair traditionally becomes the Chair in years 2 and 3, which is a leadership position that requires advocacy for the SPD--within the AAS, among our peer groups in other societies, with government agencies, and with the general public. As an educator and director of ground-based observatories who is also a big user of space data, I have a broad perspective on the challenges faced by our community. I am ready to devote my time to helping the division remain a strong and active force in securing resources for our community and disseminating the results of our research.

Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

Services, Roles, and Activities

Professional Experience and Positions

Candidate Statement

In the next few years and decades to come, challenges and opportunities will present themselves that span the scientific, policy, and society arenas that we will, as a community, need to rise to. We'll see the dawn of the PSP and DKIST era, the growing realization that our science - the understanding of our star - is of global relevance to technologically-focused society, and that the reinvigoration of exploration as new robotic (and human) explorers step out of the (relative) protection of the magnetosphere into space will need a deeper understanding of the solar system than we have currently. We'll have two decadal surveys spinning up shortly and our community must appropriately position itself, and toot our own horn a little, in order to solve bigger, broader puzzles that engage broadly and can also significantly impact our knowledge base. It's my belief that the SPD has the responsibility to step up and galvanize our community in such ti mes. I would work over the term, with policy-makers, SPD members and other community leaders, to broadly survey the possibilities with a desire to foster a more cohesive, stronger, goal-focused community - like those in the planetary or broader astrophysical science. In the words of Ben Franklin (although more than a little out of context) "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

• Photospheric magnetic field: structure and evolution
• Interior-atmosphere coupling
• Coronal Mass Ejections: pre-eruptive structure and evolution; initiation; subsequent dynamics

Services, Roles, and Activities

• SPD Popular Writing Award Committee member, 2008 - 2012 (Chair, 2009 - 2011)
• SPD Committee member, 2013-2015
• SPD Public Policy Committee member, 2014-present

Professional Experience and Positions

• Member, AGU and APS/DPP
• Member (2013) and Chair (2014) of AGU/SPA's Outstanding Student Paper Awards Committee
• Referee for Solar Physics, The Astrophysical Journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Nature Communications
• Reviewer for NSF, NASA, AFOSR, STFC (UK), German Research Foundation (DFG)
• Member, DKIST Science Working Group, fall 2017 - present

Candidate Statement

A key job for the SPD Vice-Chair / Chair is to organize meetings of our Division. Because I find our annual meetings to be very scientifically valuable, I take this duty quite seriously.

Beyond this task, the SPD Chair, in coordination with the SPD Committee, manages the Division. By many measures, the SPD is in good shape: our membership is stable, our bank accounts are healthy, and, most important, our Division is comprised of many dedicated members who support our mission to foster study of the Sun. We face challenges, however: (1) While the federal funding that supports small grants appears stable this year, the annual budgeting process is uncertain. Hence, the SPD's advocacy efforts should be maintained. (2) Funding for space missions is tighter now than in previous decades, suggesting that future solar-focused missions will either be less frequent, or smaller-scale, or both. With another Decadal Survey on the horizon, it is essential that we, as a community, advocate effectively to support missions that are critical for continued progress in understanding the Sun. (3) The diminished support for (1) grants and (2) missions mentioned above might dissuad e students from entering our field. But, for the SPD to remain vital, we must continue to support training of new students, hiring of new faculty in solar physics, and increasing the diversity of SPD membership and meeting participants.

Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

Services, Roles, and Activities

• AAS Congressional Visits Day 2015
• AGU Congressional Visits Day 2017

Professional Experience and Positions

Candidate Statement

SPD is good. To stay good, we need to be ready to adapt. I believe we need to continue and expand our current trend of including more science from the stellar astronomy community as well as the magnetospheric and plasma physics communities. With the amount of overlap between our fields, it is imperative that we stay connected and stay relevant. The SPD organization is one of the best ways to promote this connection. We also need to prepare for the upcoming increased use of ground based data (DKIST), the decreased decreased duty cycle of space based data (with PSP and Solar Orbiter), and the heavy usage of in situ instrumentation (PSP). The inclusion of the aforementioned communities will also help us learn and be prepared for handling and understanding these types of data streams and connect our community to larger knowledge pools. These connections will also allow us to better and more quickly connect our observations with the models and to incorpor ate them to better understand the data. As committee member, I will make sure these goals are not lost, and will work towards creating an inclusive environment for all.

Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

• Modeling and observation of the causes and drivers of solar eruptions
• Structure and dynamics of the large-scale extreme-ultraviolet corona
• Development and calibration of EUV solar imagers
• Solar image processing and machine learning techniques
• Improving access to and usability of solar image data

Services, Roles, and Activities

Professional Experience and Positions

• Lead Solar Physicist, GOES-R Calibration Working Group, 2015-Present
• Co-I for Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on Solar Orbiter, 2014-Present
• Co-I for ASPIICS Formation Flying coronagraph on PROBA3, 2014-Present
• PI for SWAP EUV Imager on PROBA2, 2013-2015
• President, UNH Graduate Student Organization, 2006-2008

Candidate Statement

Solar physics seems poised at the dawn of an era of great opportunity. Exciting new space missions like Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter, as well as ground-based observatories such as DKIST, will produce volumes of dramatic and wholly novel observations. Meanwhile, thanks to the 2017 eclipse and growing awareness of the importance of the sun’s role in space weather and climate, public engagement in our field has never been greater than it is now.

I am interested in finding ways to capitalize on these opportunities to help our community thrive. If elected, I would like to explore new ways to engage and support the developing careers of young scientists, particularly those from underrepresented communities, building on the already very successful work SPD has done on this front for many years. I would also like to pursue opportunities to expand on highly successful projects like SolarSoft, Sunpy, the Virtual Solar Observatory, and Helioviewer that facilitate our community’s access to data and provide tools for data analysis. Projects such as these will only become more important as exciting new observations pour in over the next decade. And finally, I hope to seek paths to expand opportunities for collaboration within our community: internationally, between basic and applied research, theory and observations.

Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

• sunspot magnetic fields
• magnetic field diagnostics
• solar chemistry
• radiative transfer modeling
• instrumentation

Services, Roles, and Activities

• AAS member since 2004
• SPD member since 2009
• SPD Congressional Committee 2018

Professional Experience and Positions

• Student - Research Experiences for Undergraduates at the National Solar Observatory, Tucson, 2003
• Student - Research Experiences for Undergraduates at the National Radio Astronomical Observatories, Charlotesville, 2004
• Post-doctoral researcher on the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph at Montana State University, 2011-2015
• Post-doctoral fellow in the NASA Post-doctoral Program at Goddard Space Flight Center, 2015-2016
• Participant - AAS Congressional Visit Day, 2013

Candidate Statement

The SPD continues to be an important part of my scientific career since I started solar research as an undergraduate, it has provided me with essential support as a graduate student and a post-doc, and I am eager for the chance to serve the solar community as an SPD committee member. Most important to me are how the SPD can cultivate student involvement in the solar community, support young scientists in their transition from students to researchers and faculty, and help in the continually changing funding situation that faces many members of the community. Although I have found our community to be a friendly one, we should continue to eliminate biases and work to make our division one that is welcoming and diverse. Finally, I would like to see our meetings bridge the cultural and scientific gap between the various sub-disciplines, theory to instrumentation, x-ray to radio, space to ground, interior to heliosphere, and make the scientific discussi on accessible to scientists at all levels.

Professional Title/Position

Degrees and Education

Affiliations

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

Services, Roles, and Activities

Professional Experience and Positions

• Coronal Global Evolutionary Model (CGEM) Team Member (2012-present)
• SPD/AAS Student Poster Judge (2012, 2013, 2016)
• AAS Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Award Judge (2014)
• Session Co-Organizer: SHINE (2017, 2018), AGU (2017)
• Session Chair: SPD (2014), AGU (2015)
• Science Organizing Committee Member: “Model coupling and data driven-simulations of solar eruptions“ (2018)

Candidate Statement

The annual SPD meeting is a primary venue for the US solar physicists to exchange research ideas and thus move the solar research forward. Therefore my primary goal would be to make sure that the future SPD meetings are affordable and well organized. In addition, as a person based at the university I will advocate not only for science but also for education and career opportunities for young-career scientists. If honored to be elected, I will do my best to work with the members of the SPD community to get the resources they need. 

I enjoy being a solar physicist not only due to challenges and diversity of the science but also due to professionalism and collegiality of the SPD community. Therefore I consider it my responsibility to give back to the community, especially now in the times of severe fiscal constraints.