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2009 Workshop Summary

CEDAR 2009

28 June - 2 July 2009
Sante Fe, New Mexico

 

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The CEDAR (Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions) Workshop for 2009 was held at the Eldorado Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico from Sunday June 28 through Thursday July 2. A total of 354 participants, 96 coming to CEDAR for the first time, came from 75 institutions, 12 outside the United States and Puerto Rico. There were 48 universities, 20 laboratories, and 7 small businesses. Of the 138 CEDAR students and post-docs, 42 were undergraduate students compared to only 25 last year and previous years. There were 4 students from foreign universities or labs in Brazil (1), Peru (2), and the West Indies (1), with 2 other students from Romania and Georgia visiting US institutions. There were 34 more participants this year in Santa Fe compared to last year in Utah, 24 more students (mostly undergraduates), and 10 non-students.

The tutorials and other plenary talks are linked via the agenda, workshop descriptions and presentations are linked on the workshop list, and posters on the poster list. Major materials will also be moved to the archive of old meetings.

The theme of the Student Workshop on Sunday was “How Can We Probe the Upper Atmosphere?” arranged by Marco Milla of the University of Illinois. Keynote talks were by Mike Kelley of Cornell University and John Foster of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Since Mike Kelley did not make it to the student workshop, video clips from his Cornell Space Weather class were played instead. Six tutorials on radars, lidars, satellites, GPS systems, imagers, and rockets were then given in two concurrent sessions. These talks and others are available in .pdf form via the agenda on the wiki. After 4 PM, the students had free time for the annual soccer game at Fort Marcy Park. The student social events were mostly arranged by Jonathan Fentzke of the University of Colorado, who was the second year student on the CSSC (CEDAR Science Steering Committee). The new student representative joining Marco is Elizabeth Bass of Boston University.

The CEDAR Prize Lecture was given in the Monday plenary session by Mike Nicolls of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) International on “New observational capabilities for studying plasma and neutral dynamical processes using incoherent scatter radar”. Three tutorials were presented on the following days by Daniel Marsh of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on “Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) studies of the upper atmosphere”, Anthea Coster of MIT on “Mid-latitude electrodynamics”, and Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnique on “Strategies for successful cubesat development”. These and some of the student workshop talks were video-taped and are available on DVDs as well as in pdf files on-line. Please contact Brian Day of Daylight Productions and Rentals if interested in obtaining DVDs and copy in Barbara Emery.

The CEDAR Science Steering Committee chair, Jeff Thayer of the University of Colorado talked a couple of times about CEDAR strategic planning for the next decade. Science highlights were given by Victor Pasko of the Pennsylvania State University, Tony van Eyken of SRI, Meers Oppenheim of Boston University, Michael Mendillo of Boston University, Jiuhou Lei of the University of Colorado, Mike Kelley of Cornell University, Rod Heelis of the University of Texas at Dallas, and Larisa Goncharenko of MIT. We heard two final CEDAR post-doc reports from Joseph Comberiate of the Applied Physics Lab at John Hopkins University and Carlos Martinis of Boston University. Interim post-doc reports were given by Guiping Liu of the University of California at Berkeley and by Stan Briczinski of the University of Wisconsin. Most of these talks are available in .pdf form from the agenda. Including the Student Worskhop, there were 25 workshops total, the same as last year, where the workshop descriptions and some of the talks given are available in .pdf form in links from the workshop list.

There were 152 posters at the Monday Mesosphere-Lower-Thermosphere (MLT) and Tuesday Ionosphere-Thermosphere (IT) poster sessions, 18 more than last year, mostly from students. There were 99 student posters, 22 with undergraduate first authors, where pictures are available of about a third of the student presenters. 70 posters were in the student poster competition, including 16 presented by undergraduates. Prizes were a certificate, various cash prizes, and text books. The judges picked first place winners from each session who received $125 each and a second edition of the book by Michael Kelley of Cornell University, “The Earth’s Ionosphere: Electrodynamics and Plasma Physics”: Sebastien de Larquier ,Masters student of Victor Pasko at the Pennsylvania State University with MLTS-03, and Edgardo Pacheco, PhD student of Rod Heelis at the University of Texas at Dallas with MDIT-03. Second place winners ($100 and an IOU for the forthcoming second edition of Schunk and Nagy, ‘Ionospheres: Physics, Plasma Physics and Chemistry”) were: Chihoko Yamashita, PhD student of Xinzhao Chu at the University of Colorado with MLTS-08, and Richard Todd Parris, PhD student of Bill Bristow at the University of Alaska with ITIT-17. Honorable mentions ($75 plus the Schunk and Nagy book) were: Jonathan Sparks, undergraduate student of Diego Janches at the University of Colorado with METR-03, and Padmashri Suresh, Masters student of Charles Swenson of the Utah State University with ITIT-26. There were three undergraduate honorable mentions ($50 each) from the IT session: Glenn Sugar of Boston University (EQIT-21), Matthew Sunderland of Penn State (ITIT-24), and Jonathan Thompson of Utah State (MDIT-10). The judges also liked posters by Loren Chang (MLTT-01, U CO) and Katelynn Greer (MLTS-09, U CO) from the MLT session, and posters by Tzu-Wei Fang (EQIT-11, NCAR and National Central University in Taiwan), Ethan Miller (EQIT-09, U IL), and Ellen Pettigrew (SOLA-07, Dartmouth) in the IT session. Thanks to Mike Kelley of Cornell, Andy Nagy of the University of Michigan, and to Bob Schunk of Utah State for providing books for the poster prizes. Thanks also to all the judges who spent so much of their time judging the posters, and thanks to all the students who participated in the student poster competition.

We took a 48-passenger bus from Boulder, Colorado to Santa Fe and back with about 20 passengers. This bus was then used to take the students back and forth from Fort Marcy Suites and on field trips. The field trips were to Tin-Nee-Ann Trading Company on Monday and to Bandelier National Monument on Thursday.

The 2010 CEDAR Workshop will return to the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado from Sunday June 20 (Student Workshop) to Friday June 25. In 2011, we go back to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a joint meeting with GEM in the new Santa Fe Convention Center from Sunday June 26 (CEDAR and GEM Student Workshops) to Friday July 1. Everyone, including students, will be in several nearby hotels (Eldorado, Hilton, La Fonda, Inn of the Governors).