Following consultations with the organizers of the 2020 Workshop in South Africa (Drs. Michael Kosch and Judy Stephenson) and the SuperDARN PIs, the Chair of the SuperDARN Executive Council, Dr. Kathryn McWilliams, has announced that the SuperDARN Workshop is postponed until next year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
See the conference website for more information.
Conference web site: https://superdarn2019.ukzn.ac.za.

Any enquiries, please contact Judy at .

Photo credit: Conference web site (Drakensberg cathedral peaks with aloes)

The 2020 ISR Summer School will be held July 27 - August 1 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The school provides students with hands-on experience in designing and running experiments at incoherent scatter radar (ISR) facilities. During this summer school, students will have the opportunity to run experiments with the Millstone Hill incoherent scatter radar and use data from multiple ISR observatories, such as Poker Flat (PFISR), Arecibo, and Jicamarca. The ISR summer school is suitable for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and attendance is limited. For most students attending institutions within the United States, travel, housing and meals will be provided. For post-docs and students outside of the United States, funding will be considered on a case-by-case basis. All students who wish to apply for the ISR summer school must follow the application instructions at the summer school web site: https://amisr.com/school
The deadline (exte3nded) for application submission is March 13, 2020.
Notice of acceptance will be sent to participants by March 27, 2020.

Dr. Federica Marcucci of the Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (IAPS), part of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), has announced that the SuperDARN Dome C North (DCN) radar located at Franco-Italian base Concordia, at Dome C (Antarctica), is now contributing data to the SuperDARN data flow. This radar joins the Dome C East (DCE) radar in making Dome C a dual radar site. The starting date for data availability is January 29, 2019. Federica advises that '..from now on Enrico Simeoli of the Italian National Research Council ICT Dep., will take care of DCE and DCN data distribution and you can consider him as the contact person for every topic regarding data accessibility and availability.'

Congratulations to Federica and her radar team!

The PI for the new HF radar located at Jiamusi, Dr. Jiaojiao Zhang of the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been working with the SuperDARN Data Distribution Working Group (DDWG) to begin contributing data to the general distribution. The radar site is located in northeastern China (46.8 deg N, 130.5 deg E; 41.8 deg N in AACGM) and first observations were reported by Zhang et al. 2020. Data from the radar will be available from June 25, 2019. The name of the associated hdw.dat file is hdw.dat.jme and the listing name for the radar is "Jiamusi East".
Congratulations to Dr. Zhang and her radar team!
Photo: Side view of the main array of the Jiamusi radar (Photo credit: Jiaojiao Zhang)

The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides annually more than 50 scholarships to the brightest and most talented college students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.Students can not apply directly themselves. They must be nominated by a Virginia Tech Faculty member.

Eligibility: The student must be U.S. citizen and must be in a STEM major.
https://astronautscholarship.org/assets/astronaut-scholarship-major-fields-of-study.pdf
The student must intend to pursue research or advance their field upon completion of their final degree. Current Sophomore or Juniors (graduating > May 2021)

Faculty Nomination deadline: Thursday, March 5, 2020

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