MIST

Approval of minutes of previous meeting

• The minutes of the last face-to-face meeting were approved
• Jim Wild is now the AGP grants chair
• Newsletter
  • We were going to restart the newsletter but this fizzled—it may be the case that this is not something the community want?
  • It was suggested that we should do either the newsletter or individual emails from the list, not both
  • Nuggets were eventually divorced from newsletters and they are currently flourishing under Jasmine
• Tweets were successfully sent during Autumn MIST and this was generally a success
• We found out about why people didn’t attend MIST@NAM, which basically translated to lack of good advertising, cost, difficulty of going to Hull, and other good meetings
• Spring MIST and EWASS occurred
• Geophysics fora did not continue owing to the combination of the research councils into UKRI
• The last teleconference minutes were discussed and the actions had been completed

Welcomes to MIST Council

• Oliver was welcomed and John was re-welcomed to MIST Council

A&G special issue

• Sarah to construct a list of A&G articles that it would be good to reprint in a virtual issue
• Sue Bowler needs pictures
  • John has asked for images for aurora from [redacted]
  • Councillors to seek pictures of the aurora for the article and contact Sue Bowler
  • John sought conference photos from the mailing list and has specifically emailed [redacted] about the recent Spring MIST photos
  • John to submit his conference writeup to A&G
  • John to chase pictures if not enough have been submitted by the time he’s back from leave
  • Oliver to let Mike Lockwood know that his article is with Sue Bowler and thank him for writing it
  • It’s ended up looking like a great issue!

Spring MIST 2018

• Rishbeth prize articles are in A&G and winners will be notified
• [redacted]

Autumn MIST 2018

• On 30 November
• Announcement to go out on 1 October
• Abstract deadline on 1 November
• Ian got a new quote and put arrangements in place for the meeting at the GeolSoc
• We have the venue
  
  • Costs approx £1800 (so charge £20 per person)
  • From 9:30–17:30
  • Meeting to run 10:30–17:30
  • Ian said 100 attendees
  • 15 double-sided poster boards
  • Tea with biscuits in the afternoon
  • We’re allowed to bring lunch into the library
• John to look up stickers for attendees
• We have to have someone on the door (as per GeolSoc rules)
  
  • Ian to ask Sue Caldwell to do this
• Organisational details:
  
  • Theme: Radiation belts
    
    • Keynote talk and the morning session
    • Emphasise planetary radiation belts?
  • Ian to ask Richard Horne to deliver the keynote speech
  • Jasmine to organise the meeting
    
    • Oliver to co-organise
    • Organisers to ask people to write notes for the article
    • John to construct a document which guides the logic of assigning the oral presentations
  • Jasmine to include requests for lightning talks in abstract submission forms
    
    • A third type of presentation
    • Not for poster adverts
    • Designed for public engagement efforts, techniques, datasets, etc.
  • Jonny to consult the UCL diversity/inclusion rep about how best to navigate the location of the after-meeting socialising

Future NAM/Spring MIST meetings

• NAM 2019 SOC will be set up by the end of the month
• Then the call for sessions will go out (approx. November, deadline January)
• Should Council construct a basic schedule of key sessions it would be useful to have (some interdisciplinary)? Should we avoid the open MIST session?
• Ian to contact Mihalis M:
  
  • Get UKSP’s opinion on what sessions they would like to see
  • And which ones would make good cross-disciplinary sessions?
  • Have a few hour long UKSP+MIST joint forum embedded in NAM?
  • Councillors to think about this and come back at the next teleconference
    
    • End of Oct/beginning of Nov
  • Sarah to push NERC involvement in the community sessions
  • Is there scope for a joint UKSP+MIST out-of-town meeting after NAM?
• NAM 2020:
  
  • Jonny to ask RAS Council what they have planned
• We should consider UKSP/MIST joint meetings!

G-MIST discussion meetings

• Three upcoming meetings
  
  • Jasmine’s Sandhu’s storms and substorms meeting
  • Steve Miller and Nick Achilleos‘ H3+ meeting
  • Richard Harrison’s L5 space weather meeting
    
    • John to put this on the website
• Should we encourage people to suggest meetings?
  
  • Ian to check with Mark Lester whether ideas are ‘in the pipeline’
  • The deadline will probably be March 2019
• The MIST+PE occurred:
  
  • One of the meeting outcomes was that a press list would be useful
    
    • John to contact the RAS about their press list
    • John to include a note about a press list on the MIST website
      
      • Possibly with press@mist.ac.uk
    • One outcome was that continued discussion would be good
      
      • John to email Sheila at RAS to see whether there’s scope for getting funding for a series of MIST+PE meetings under the RAS200 banner
      • John to suggest MIST+PE session to NAM 2019
      • Encourage lightning talks at Autumn MIST?
    • Is the MIST website/social media aiming at the public? Should it be?
      
      • John and Jasmine’s gut feeling is ‘no, and no’. The MIST website is aimed at the community.
    • How do we use online resources to support the MIST+PE community?
      
      • New page on the website to highlight MIST+PE work
        
        • John to populate this and then announce it to the community for feedback
      • #public-engagement channel on Slack

Summer schools

• We think that [redacted] would be a good host for 2024
  
  • Last year Jonny had an action to sound them out for a future summer school
  • Jonny to check whether that happened/follow that up
• Ian to talk to Mihalis M to see what the plan is for the next phase of summer schools
• John to get any extant feedback from Rob Fear and Claire Foullon
  
  • With a view to passing it to the 2019 summer schools
• It might be best to avoid having two institutions be the same affiliation (UKSP/MIST) in the same year

Community consultations

• Last consultation was the SSAP consultation
• These are often announced very close to the deadline
• Should we have venues to discuss MIST tactics on funding? A “MIST forum”?
  
  • Solar missions forum is (somewhat) the UKSP equivalent
• Sarah and Jonny to discuss a MIST forum in or near Lancaster for the day after NAM
  
  • RAS out-of-town meeting?

Geophysics forums

• Jonny to ask MISTHOGS whether Geophysics Forums are a good thing and get ball rolling on re-establishing them
  
  • On proviso that every group needs to send 1–2 people
  • Chaired by Mark Lester
  • Follow-up actions to be taken

RAS and other awards

• John to resubmit his Maunder award nomination
• We could nominate [redacted] for [redacted] next year
• IOP award deadline coming up in January
  
  • Submit RAS award nominations to the IOP award?
• John to add the Alfvén award and the AGU awards to the website
  
  • http://plasma.ciemat.es/eps/awards/

MIST website

• It has received an upgrade courtesy of John and Q
  • John to chase Q to see how to pin posts (e.g. on the Nuggets page)
  • John to look at whether info@mist.ac.uk and other email addresses could be set up to redirect to various members of Council
  • John to look at getting a Twitter widget embedded on the website
  • John to split summer school list into past/future schools
  • John to check whether we have analytics

Nuggets

• Jasmine has been doing great work on nuggets
• John to replace ‘Science’ tab with ‘Nuggets’ tab on main menu
• Jasmine to give guidelines on appropriate level for nuggets
  • Aimed at undergrad physics knowledge
  • No references!
  • Short text
  • One figure

MISTHOGS mailing list

• Being used, and has generally been well-received

Doctoral Training Partnerships/Centres for Doctoral Training

• Jonny fed into NERC at a relatively high level that a CDT is necessary
• Next one is not us, but we think we are on the list of upcoming ideas
  
  • Jonny to see whether we’re still on the list
• If CDTs are supposed to be cross-council, what about NERC+STFC?
• How will UKRI affect this? They have a CDT on artificial intelligence
  
  • Jonny to speak to Robyn Thomas on how this has evolved
• Lancaster has a PhD student starting on the new STFC data science CDT
• Jonny put a comment into the SSAP consultation to use the UK spaceport for sounding rocket flights, balloons etc as a way to have PhD students (and the wider community) designing, building, analysing such missions
  
  • SSAP may endorse it in the report of unselected bits
  • If this occurs, Jonny to touch base with UKSA to try and move it forward

MIST Council membership

• Ian was elected Chair
• Ian and Sarah will be at the end of their terms next year
• We need to start thinking about who should succeed Ian
• Some people asked whether they needed to be in post throughout the term they were standing for, and the answer is no — we should highlight that in future elections

MIST Charter

• John to put amendments to the vote with the MIST community
• John also to remove “No intermediate counts will be revealed. Final vote totals will be released only to the candidates.”

Any Other Business

• We discussed the Strategic Priorities Fund:
  
  • Ian McCrea talked to Janet Seed, one of the things that UKRI do is look for overlapping bid ideas and combine them when they’re found
  • Other bodies are also allowed to bid into the process e.g. UKSA, Met Office
  • Ian McCrea requested STFC funding for a space weather idea. Others similar:
    
    • [redacted]
  • Ian’s idea is going through to phase two
• Ian to talk to Lucy Carpenter to look at success rates of NERC standard grants