2015 Workshop Summary

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Summary

The 30th CEDAR (Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions) Workshop was held in 2015 on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington from Sunday June 21 through Thursday June 25 courtesy of host John Sahr of the Electrical Engineering (EE) Department and member of the CEDAR Science Steering Committee (CSSC). The students were lodged in dorm rooms, while the Watertown and Deca Hotels had room blocks. Most of the workshop took place at Kane Hall, but the Monday evening banquet was held at the HUB (Husky Union Building) Ballroom. 

A total of 344 came to the 2015 CEDAR Workshop, including 139 students or CEDAR Postdocs. The CEDAR participants came from 75 institutions, 17 outside the United States and Puerto Rico, which was less foreign participation than 2014. There were 50 universities, 20 laboratories, and 5 small businesses. Of the 139 CEDAR students, about half were new to the CEDAR Workshop. One student was from a Texas high school, 18 were undergraduate students, and 15 students came from 6 foreign universities and from Jicamarca Observatory. Since funding depended on presenting a poster, all students but 3 undergraduates presented posters at the poster sessions, where 5 students presented 2 posters, and one who had to cancel had his poster up in absentia. Fifty non-students had posters, or about 25%. All poster presenters got wiki logins to be able to upload their posters, which was required for the 114 students in the student poster competition.

There were 189 CEDAR posters at two poster sessions from 4-7 PM on Tuesday and Wednesday, where the CEDAR posters were separated into 77 Mesosphere-Lower-Thermosphere (MLT) on Tuesday and 112 Ionosphere-Thermosphere (IT) posters on Wednesday. There were 136 CEDAR student presenters (7 more than last year), including 15 undergraduate first authors (6 less than 2014), where 114 posters were in the student poster competition, 11 more than last year. Prizes were a certificate, and the text book "Ionospheres: Physics, Plasma Physics, and Chemistry" courtesy of co-author Bob Schunk (USU) for the first place winners.

First place IT winner

Vicki Hsu of the University of Colorado with POLA-16.

Second place IT winner

Catalin Negrea of the University of Colorado with IRRI-06

Honorable mention

Jie Zhu of the University of Michigan with SOLA-16.

Best "undergraduate" IT poster

SOLA-13 by Rafael Mesquita of Clemson University, although Rafael was actually a second year graduate student. So, the chief judge wanted to also honor Jonathon Smith, an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Dallas, for his fine poster EQIT-09 as well.

First place MLT winner

Weichun Fong of the University of Colorado with MLTT-02, Second place winner in 2014.

Second place winner

Ashish Goel of Stanford University with METR-04.

Honorable mention

Vu Nguyen of the University of Colorado with MLTT-08

Best undergraduate MLT poster

Matthew Grawe of the University of Illinois with COUP-04.

Thanks to the chief judge Greg Earle of Virginia Tech, who had help from Anja Stroemme and Mary McCready of SRI International, and thanks to the 17 IT judges and 13 MLT judges who spent so much of their time judging the posters. Thanks to all the students who participated in the student poster competition and to their advisors. 

The Student Workshop on Sunday on "Basic Questions of the Atmosphere" was run by Lindsay Goodwin from the University of Saskatchewan, the most recent CEDAR student representative, with help from the second year student representative, Leda Sox of Utah State University. After the afternoon break, Katelynn Greer discussed how to get good governmental science policy, and the workshop ended with a panel discussing "Is there Life after Graduation?". The annual soccer game followed. The new CEDAR student representative joining Lindsay is Victoriya Forsythe from the University of Alaska. The students also had breakfast with Paul Shepson, AGS Division Director of NSF on Monday, and a Student Pizza Lunch with a Question-Answer Panel at the By George Café, where panel members included CSSC chair Josh Semeter.

The 26th CEDAR Prize Lecture was given in the Monday plenary session by Jonathan Makela of the University of Illinois. His title was Thermospheric dynamics as observed through the lens of networked FPIs (pdf). This was followed by our fifth Distinguished Lecture given by Michael Mendillo from Boston University on There's an Ionosphere in Each Hemisphere (pdf). We heard an update about the NSF Geospace Portfolio Review from Bill Lotko, the chair of that committee, followed by a Town Hall meeting so the community could ask questions. Our banquet speaker Monday evening was Bob McCoy from the University of Alaska speaking on "Geophysics in Alaska", where we learned the average rainfall in Fairbanks was about the same as that in Arizona, but with very different flora. We ended the week with a special lecture by Rich Behnke, former head of Geospace at NSF, with his talk CEDAR: The Past, the Present, Some Recommendations for the Future (pdf). The community really appreciated all Rich has done for us, and honored him with a standing ovation at the end of his talk, when he also received a special award.

2015 was the second year of Grand Challenge (GC) Workshops. A third GC workshop was chosen in 2015 by the CSSC, "Storms and Substorms Without Borders" headed by Naomi Maruyama of the University of Colorado. Their tutorial speaker was Bill Lotko of Dartmouth College speaking on "Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-Thermosphere Coupling During Storms and Substorms". As in 2014, Grand Challenge workshops met 4 hours total, while all but two other workshops met 2 hours.

The Distinguished and Prize lectures, the GC tutorial, the Special Lecture, and three Science Highlights by Han-Li Liu (HAO/NCAR), Dave Fritts (GATS Inc) and Gary Swenson (University of Illinois) were videotaped. These 5.5 hours of plenary talks are all available at 2015 CEDAR playlist on-line.