Ke Li has been visiting with the SuperDARN group and assisting her supervisor, Dr. Erxiao Lui, since October. She is a graduate student at the School of Communication Engineering at Hangzhou Dianzi University. During her stay Ke made a presentation to the group on her experience as a student and conducted research under the supervision of Dr. Lui and Dr. Ruohoniemi. She now returns home in time to celebrate Chinese New Year. The members of the VT SuperDARN group wish her the best!

Pictured: Shibaji Chakraborty, Bharat Kunduri, Erxiao Lui, Mike Ruohoniemi, Ke Li, Jo Baker, JianJun Liu (visiting from the Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai)

Photo credit: Augustine Yellu

The Jicamarca Radio Observatory (JRO) located near Lima, Peru is the venue for a summer school that is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by the Geophysical Institute of Peru. JIREP is an international internship program that is offered to junior/senior undergraduate, and/or first and second year graduate students. The program will cover the travel expenses (to and from Lima) as well as a reasonable stipend. Students with interests in atmospheric and ionospheric science and radar techniques, electronics, RF, instrumentation and computer science are encouraged to apply. If you would like to discuss this possibility with interested VT faculty, contact Dr. Mike Ruohoniemi (mikeruo@vt.edu) or Dr. Jo Baker (bakerjb@vt.edu) or any faculty member in the Space@VT research center listed at http://space.vt.edu/people.html The application deadline is February 20, 2020 and the JIREP web site is https://www.igp.gob.pe/convocatorias/jirep

Simon Shepherd has announced that the Altitude Adjusted Corrected Geomagnetic Coordinates (AACGM-v2) model, originally developed to compare conjugacy of data from SuperDARN radars in the northern and southern hemispheres Baker and Wing, 1989, has been updated. In his words:

'With the recent release of the 13th generation International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF-13) (https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/IAGA/vmod/igrf.html) an update to AACGM-v2 is now available at http://superdarn.thayer.dartmouth.edu/aacgm.html

The update includes new AACGM-v2 coefficients that extend the date range to 2025 and small changes to the software to accommodate the new date range and coefficient files.

Note that small differences in the IGRF-13 coefficients will cause corresponding small changes in AACGM-v2 coordinates derived using the new model for dates beginning in 2010.'

Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) provides STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Bridge Scholarships of $1,000 to students who will be sophomores during the 2020-2021 academic year. Students from any federally recognized minority group in STEM and enrolled full-time in a program of STEM at one of the five Virginia Space Grant member universities are strongly encouraged to apply.

Click the attached link for more information and the online application. http://vsgc.odu.edu/stembridge/

Deadline for students to apply is Monday, March 13, 2020

VT SuperDARN student Muhammad Maimaiti defended his doctoral disseration on Thursday, November 21 to an examining committee of six professors. Muhammad is advised by Drs. Jo Baker and Mike Ruohoniemi. He has published in leading journals on topics as varied as reconnection dynamics, subauroral electric fields, and the prediction of auroral substorm onset using machine learning techniques. The title of his dissertation is 'Driving Influences of Ionospheric Electrodynamics at Mid- and High-Latitudes'. While working towards his doctoral degree Muhammad also earned a dual M.A. in Data Analysis & Applied Statistcs from the Department of Statistics.

Congratulations, Muhammad!

At the 2019 NSF CEDAR Workshop Muhammad won a poster prize in the MLT category (pictured).

Duration: June 19-25, 2020
Location: NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia

Open to: US Citizens and Permanent Residents
Application Deadline: 30 April 2020
Apply Through: http://tinyurl.com/2020RockOn

How it works: You register to participate and, when selected, you are invited to stay in scenic Chincoteague, Virginia (next to the Wallops Flight Facility) for the duration of the program, assembling and then flying a rocket payload as part of a team of rocketeers.Teams of 3 build a sounding rocket payload from a kit in three days and launch it into space on the sixth day. Since 2008, 702 people have participated in the RockOn workshops and successfully built and launched 226 payloads to space. The hardware in the kit may be used on future RockSat (and possibly CubeSat) flights. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility will again be providing the rocket (two stage Terrier-Orion) and launch operations during the 2020 workshop. This hands-on workshop is about learning to build sounding rocket payloads, not rockets. RockOn is supported by the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant programs with significant cost sharing from Wallops and NASA Education. The registration for the 2020 RockOn workshop, is $909 if your register by March 6, 2020 ($999 after), which includes kit hardware (that teams take home), breakfast and lunch each day plus one dinner, t-shirt, handbook, software, and more plus a priceless experience. For more information on the workshop, please visit the website.