MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

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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
Full details can be found here: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/royal-astronomical-society-unveils-2023-award-winners.

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.

MIST sessions at NAM

The forthcoming National Astronomy Meeting has a variety of sessions that have been proposed by members of the MIST community; the following is a list of the sessions that have been advertised on the MIST mailing list. (If you would like your session to appear below, please email MIST Council to be included.)

Open session on Magnetospheric, Ionospheric and Solar-Terrestrial physics (Oliver Allanson, John Coxon, Gregory Hunt, Mathew Owens, Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Maria-Theresia Walach)
We welcome contributions from all MIST disciplines discussing the latest results: from global system-scale dynamics and climatological timescales, down to gyroscale processes.

From plasma to galactic dynamics: collisionless physics across the Universe (Oliver Allanson, Thomas Neukirch, Chris Hamilton, Luca Franci, Jean-Baptiste Fouvry)
In this inter-disciplinary session we welcome all observational, theoretical and modelling work that considers the physics of collisionless systems – in either (or both of) the plasma and gravitational contexts. Invited speakers: David Burgess (Queen Mary University of London) & Benoit Famaey (Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg).

Magnetospheres of the outer planets (Gregory Hunt, Jonathan Nichols, Joe Kinrade)
In this session, we invite presentations on any aspect of modelling or data analysis regarding the magnetospheres of the outer planets.

Observations of CMEs: from onset to impact (Teodora Mihailescu, Shannon Jones, Lucie Green, Mathew Owens)
We invite contributions which explore observations of CMEs: from high-resolution on disk images of CME onset, to heliospheric imagery and in situ measurements in the inner heliosphere, to create a coherent picture of a CME’s journey. We particularly welcome contributions which combine different types of remote sensing observations with plasma parameters measured in situ.

SMILE supporting science: magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling (Michaela Mooney, Maria-Theresia Walach, Jennifer Carter)
This session invites submissions concerning magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling using a combination of space and ground-based observations, or comparisons between space and ground-based observational datasets.

The solar wind from a new perspective with Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe (David Stansby, Lorenzo Matteini, Laura Berčič, Lloyd Woodham, Stephanie Yardley)
This session will focus on first results from Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe, including solar wind sources and connection science, heating and acceleration processes, turbulence and kinetic physics, as well as large-scale morphology. We welcome contributions from in-situ and remote sensing observations, modelling and theory.

Space weather and plasma processes: from the Sun to the Earth Karen Meyer, Sarah N Bentley, Marianna Korsos, Teo Bloch, Shaun Bloomfield, Richard Boynton, Tom Elsden, Richard Harrison, Paolo Pagano, Andy Smith)
We welcome presentations from the scale of individual processes to the coupling between physical systems, in the fields of solar, heliospheric, magnetospheric and ionospheric physics. We encourage contributions on a variety of research methodologies, including the application of techniques drawn from other disciplines, across observations, theory and modelling.

Wave-Particle Interactions in Space and Astrophysical Plasmas (Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Aurora Simionescu, Daniel Verscharen, Clare Watt, Emma Woodfield)
Wave-particle interactions are an essential process in plasmas across our solar system and in astrophysical bodies that governs plasma heating and the transfer of energy between particles and electromagnetic fields. This session aims to bring together researchers from the solar, terrestrial, planetary, and astrophysics communities to evaluate the breadth of interactions and the variation of their characteristics for different plasma regimes. Invited speakers include Wen Li (Boston University) and Francesco Valentini (Università della Calabria).

Waves and Oscillations in the Solar Atmosphere in the High-Resolution Era (Noemi Zsamberger, David Kuridze, Anne-Marie Broomhall, Robertus Erdelyi) The session will provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and expertise in the field of solar atmospheric waves and oscillations, with a special focus on new theoretical, modelling and observational results obtained thanks to a variety of new instrumentation (such as SDO/AIA, Parker Solar Probe, SST, GREGOR and DKIST) with unprecedented high spatial, temporal and spectral resolution capabilities.