MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

Latest news

Winners of Rishbeth Prizes 2023

We are pleased to announce that following Spring MIST 2023 the Rishbeth Prizes this year are awarded to Sophie Maguire (University of Birmingham) and Rachel Black (University of Exeter).

Sophie wins the prize for the best MIST student talk which was entitled “Large-scale plasma structures and scintillation in the high-latitude ionosphere”. Rachel wins the best MIST poster prize, for a poster entitled “Investigating different methods of chorus wave identification within the radiation belts”. Congratulations to both Sophie and Rachel!

As prize winners, Sophie and Rachel will be invited to write articles for Astronomy & Geophysics, which we look forward to reading.

MIST Council extends their thanks to the University of Birmingham for hosting the Spring MIST meeting 2023, and to the Royal Astronomical Society for their generous and continued support of the Rishbeth Prizes.

Nominations for MIST Council

We are pleased to open nominations for MIST Council. There are two positions available (detailed below), and elected candidates would join Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Andy Smith, Maria-Theresia Walach, and Emma Woodfield on Council. The nomination deadline is Friday 26 May.

Council positions open for nomination

  • MIST Councillor - a three year term (2023 - 2026). Everyone is eligible.
  • MIST Student Representative - a one year term (2023 - 2024). Only PhD students are eligible. See below for further details.

About being on MIST Council


If you would like to find out more about being on Council and what it can involve, please feel free to email any of us (email contacts below) with any of your informal enquiries! You can also find out more about MIST activities at mist.ac.uk.

Rosie Hodnett (current MIST Student Representative) has summarised their experience on MIST Council below:
"I have really enjoyed being the PhD representative on the MIST council and would like to encourage other PhD students to nominate themselves for the position. Some of the activities that I have been involved in include leading the organisation of Autumn MIST, leading the online seminar series and I have had the opportunity to chair sessions at conferences. These are examples of what you could expect to take part in whilst being on MIST council, but the council will welcome any other ideas you have. If anyone has any questions, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..”

How to nominate

If you would like to stand for election or you are nominating someone else (with their agreement!) please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 26 May. If there is a surplus of nominations for a role, then an online vote will be carried out with the community. Please include the following details in the nomination:
  • Name
  • Position (Councillor/Student Rep.)
  • Nomination Statement (150 words max including a bit about the nominee and your reasons for nominating. This will be circulated to the community in the event of a vote.)
 
MIST Council contact details

Rosie Hodnett - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Mathew Owens - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Beatriz Sanchez-Cano - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jasmine Kaur Sandhu - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Andy Smith - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Maria-Theresia Walach - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Emma Woodfield - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
MIST Council email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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

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.

Public Engagement and Me

by Affelia Wibisono

Affelia Wibisono is a first year PhD student at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (University College London). Alongside her research into Jupiter’s x-ray aurorae, Affelia is involved in a wide variety of public engagement activities. In this post Affelia talks about her experiences doing public engagement and ways to get more involved yourself!

My Experiences in Public Engagement

Public engagement is something I’m passionate about. In fact, I had a career in science communication for 6 years before starting my PhD at MSSL. It was something that I knew I wanted to do since I was at school, so I took part in as many outreach activities as I could during my undergraduate studies. I also worked as a summer intern at Winchester Science Centre and Planetarium and even had the chance to take part in the BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory Roadshow whilst I was there.
Photo of Affelia and Liz Bonnin

Me with Liz Bonnin, one of the presenters of Bang Goes the Theory, during my summer internship at Winchester Science Centre and Planetarium.

After graduation, I started working at the Science Museum in London as an Explainer where I did pretty much that: I explained the science behind the exhibits in the Launchpad (now known as Wonderlab), Pattern Pod and The Garden interactive galleries. I got to engage with a variety of people - from toddlers to their nannies, from Year 1 classes to A-Level students, science enthusiasts, international visitors and even people who wanted to impress their dates. By far my favourite part of the job was to present science shows with a lot of demos and audience participation. I had two shows, my first was “Flash! Bang! Wallop!” which was about explosions and was obviously great fun to perform! Who wouldn’t want to blow a squib or fire Barbie out of a cannon?! My second show was “The Bubbles Show” and was for younger children. One of my highlights was when I had 200 people (yes, including the adults) shout “WE LOVE BUBBLES! WE LOVE BUBBLES!” at me.

A photo from the "Flash! Bang! Wallop!" show at the Science Museum.A photo from "The Bubbles Show" at the Science Museum.

Presenting my two science shows at the Science Museum.

I then moved on to the Royal Observatory Greenwich (ROG) where I coordinated the schools programme and was in charge of the day-to-day running of the onsite activities. Making sure 300 students and teachers were in the right place at the right time amongst other visitors in a relatively small building was challenging at times! I also presented planetarium shows and led workshops, again for a whole range of audiences, and even gave talks at festivals such as the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, Camp Bestival and Space Rocks. It was at the ROG where I truly developed my writing skills. I was lucky enough to write posts for their blog, articles for newspapers, and short pieces for the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year books. Our online audience was also very important to us, so I was also involved in the ROG’s Live Streams, animated videos and podcasts. Something I never thought I would get to do was give media interviews. My very first was a live interview about New Horizon’s flyby of Pluto for a South African radio show. Since then, I’ve spoken to journalists about Tim Peake, the Great American Eclipse of 2017 and various astronomical events amongst other things for TV, radio, print and online.

A photo of Affelia giving a talk.

Left: Presenting at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. Right: My piece for The Guardian about the Perseids meteor shower.

Since I started at MSSL in September 2018, I’ve taken part in a number of public engagement activities. Some of them were small scale and required very little preparation like running a workshop for a group of scouts or visiting a local school. Others needed more planning like giving a public lecture at the ROG (I was asked to do this before I’d even left my full time job there!) or being interviewed for a short film about the 50th Anniversary of the first lunar landing.

A photo of Affelia giving a public lecture.A photo of Affelia talking to primary school pupils.

Left: My public lecture at the ROG’s Peter Harrison Planetarium. Right: Using fruits to show the relative sizes of the planets in our Solar System to some primary school pupils.

I’m grateful that both of my supervisors do a lot of outreach themselves and are very supportive of me doing the same. I still work at the ROG and present planetarium shows and school workshops when they need someone to cover.  I can accept and reject shifts as I like so I can fit them around my work at MSSL and other commitments. I was asked by Jasmine to write about how I manage my time between public engagement and research, and to be honest, I don’t know if I’ve done that successfully yet. I limit myself to no more than 2 days at the ROG per month and make myself unavailable to work there for at least two weeks before a Big Deadline or conference. Before saying yes to any outreach requests at MSSL, I check what my schedule looks like around the time of the event. If it looks clear(ish), I ask myself these questions: 1) Will I enjoy it? 2) Will I gain any new experience, skills or contacts by doing it? 3) Am I the best person to do it or is the event better suited for someone with a different expertise? Public engagement should benefit you and your audience.

Why do Public Engagement?

My belief is that engaging the public is just as important as the research that we do as PhD students. Some research councils, such as STFC, require those they support to do a certain amount of outreach. Interacting with non-specialists is a great way to share your passion for your work and I often find myself more motivated to continue with my research afterwards because they remind me that Jupiter’s X-ray aurorae are freaking awesome. Their questions can really test your understanding and even give you ideas as to where to take your research next.

Public engagement allows you to develop skills that can be transferred to your research and beyond. The most obvious being your communication skills. There’s no doubt in my mind that my experience in public engagement has helped with every presentation, report and funding application I’ve produced during my PhD so far. It allows you to grow your professional contacts and develop your team working skills. I’ve already mentioned time management, but it can also help improve your people management and leadership skills too. If you can successfully get 30 teenagers to do what you ask them to, you can do it to anyone. I love coming up with new demos and new activities to engage the public with because I get to be creative and practise my problem solving skills.

I’d like to think that I’ve sparked scientific interests in some of the young people I’ve worked with and helped them to build their confidence.  If they decide that they want to continue studying science then that’s great. But they won’t all grow up to be scientists, and that’s ok. My hope is that they have a newfound appreciation for the Universe and enjoyed themselves whilst doing so. That’s enough for me. 

Last but definitely not least, it’s fun!

What kind of Public Engagement can I do?

There are so many things you can do! You could organise something through your department, like an open day or work experience week for A-Level students. Your university probably has an Outreach or Widening Participation team that could offer advice and resources. There are already existing programmes with guaranteed audiences like Pint of Science, Soapbox Science (for women researchers), and the online based I’m a Scientist Get Me Out of Here that you can get involved in. I’m a Scientist is a two week long competition in which scientists from a wide range of disciplines are split into several groups. The winning scientist from each group receive £500 to communicate their research with the public. School students (from both primary and secondary schools) ask questions for the scientists to answer at any time between the two weeks. There are also live chats that last 30 minutes each and can be very intense as the aim is to answer as many questions from the children as possible. To be honest, I never saw it as a competition but as a chance to interact with many young people without too much effort.

A screenshot of the "I'm a Scientist Get Me Out of Here" Profile.

My I’m a Scientist Get Me Out of Here profile

Schools and astronomical societies are always looking for expert speakers. They may contact your department or you could sign up to be a STEM Ambassador. Teachers and group leaders advertise their events on the website and you can volunteer to do as little or as many as you want.

You can go down the digital route by writing a blog, recording podcasts or starting a YouTube channel. Your university might have one of these already that you can help with. MSSL has a podcast called Thinking Space and with the help of other first year PhD students and Professor Geraint Jones, the creator of the podcast, I recorded an episode about our first few months at MSSL for prospective students. If that sounds like too much then you can use Twitter or Instagram to engage the public with your work.

It’s super important to remember that there is no such thing as the “general public”. Public engagement is most effective when you have a clear idea of who your target audience is. This could be based on their age group, shared interests or needs. This will help you decide what kind of activity you do.

Training and Funding

There’s a lot of support for researchers who want to do more public engagement. Look out for training opportunities run by your universities. There’s a number of mailing lists and communities you can be a part of that provide training and are great ways to meet other public engagement doers and professional science communicators. Three that I’m a member of are the  PSCI-Comm mailing list, BIG and the Presenter Network. I find the Presenter Network especially helpful because you get to meet a wide variety of presenters, including actors, comedians, museum workers and YouTube presenters. It was founded by the ROG but it has now grown and has several hubs around the country (and even internationally!) so if you’re not based in London, chances are there’s a hub near you. We meet every 2 or 3 months at different places (different organisations take it in turns to host (e.g. the ROG, the Science Museum, ZSL London Zoo) and share best practice about different aspects of presenting. There is now an annual conference every September at the ROG. Best thing is that it’s all free! Organisations like the NCCP, IOP, STFC, the Royal Society and the RAS offer grants that you can apply for if you have a public engagement idea you want to come to life.

I hope this has been helpful and have fun out there!

If you have any questions about Affelia's post and how to get involved with public engagement, then you can This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..