Heliophysics Community Newsletters

The following lists community newsletters and information sources.  Additionally, HelioNauts.org is an up-to-date information resource available to all members of the Heliophysics Community. 

AGU list of community resources: A comprehensive page listing many resources 

SCOSTEP/PRESTO Newsletter: Newsletter of the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics 
AGU/SPA Newsletter: Newsletter of the American Geophysical Union's Space Physics and Aeronomy Section
SolarNews: Newsletter of the AAS Solar Physics Division
CEDAR Newsletter: Newsletter of the Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions Commuinity
GEM Messenger: Newsletter of the Geospace Environment Modeling Community
SHINE Newsletter: Newsletter of the Solar Heliospheric and INterplanetary Environment Community
Heliosphere News: Newsletter devoted to Heliospheric Science
MIST News:  News page for the Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial Council

 

July 2024: 

• CfHA helped lead the first NASA Goddard "AI Showcase."  Multiple research projects were presented, including Mission Forge.  
• Congratulations to CfHA Lead Intern Amy Tao for being selected as a John Mather Nobel Scholar!  
• Daniel da Silva and Chris Bard presented a poster titled “Neural Data Compression of Plasma Distributions for Space Weather” at the NASA AI Networking Event administered by Code 606. The poster can be viewed online here.  

June 2024: 

• CfHA welcomes ten summer interns, who will be working on a variety of research projects.  We thank the nearly two dozen mentors who make this program possible, and this year's lead intern, Amy Tao from New York University. 

May 2024: 

• The Python in Heliophysics Summer School 2024 took place May 20-24, 2024. Attendees learned about a wide range of python packages for Heliophysics, and participated in many training exercises and group activities.  CfHA led the "Machine Learning" portion of the conference.  Training materials can be found here. 
• The CfHA MIRO (MUREP Institutional Research Opportunity" partner program led by Prof. Haimin Wang at NJIT “AI Powered Solar Eruption Center (SEC) of Excellence in Research and Education” has been selected for funding. This five-year program will will make transformative advances in key operational SWx needs: forecasting high-impact solar events, by utilizing physics-based methods and developing a reliable characterization of forecast uncertainty.
• The WSA Dashboard was made available at the CCMC. The dashboard, developed by CfHA intern Jaime Landeros under Daniel da Silva's mentorship, displays real-time predictions generated by the Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model for solar wind speed, interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) polarity, and magnetic connectivity of solar wind at Earth, Mars, Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, and STEREO and their sources back at the Sun. 
• Daniel da Silva presented at the Workshop for Collaborative and Open-Source Science Data Systems conference organized by CU Boulder. The title of the presentation was “CCSDSPy: Python Binary Spacecraft Packet Decoding” and it discussed the CCSDSPy library used by the GSFC-led Space Weather SOC (SWxSOC), the Europa Clipper Data Processing System (JPL), the Canadian Space Agency MOC, and others.

March 2024: 

• Team members participated in the 4th NASA Science Mission Directorate Artificial Intelligence Workshop held in Huntsville, AL March 24-28 2024.  
• Congratulations to Professor Chantale Damas of Queensborough Community College of City University of New York for winning a NASA SMD Bridge Proposal "Expanding Heliophysics Scientific Discovery through HelioAnalytics."  Prof. Damas's team will work with the Center for HelioAnalytics on a research program and expanding a curriculum for students in heliophysics and machine learning.  

January 2024: 

• The CfHA Lead Intern for Summer 2024, Omar Shalaby of New Jersey Institute of Technology, presented "Radiation Belt Data Science using the Solar Dynamics Observatory" at the 104th meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Baltimore, MD.

December 2023:

• CfHA led many activities at the Fall 2023 American Geophysical Union Meeting. The team established a resource website listing all data science, machine learning, Open Science, AI, and related activities at the conference.  Additionally, a beta version of the HelioWeb collaboration resource premiered and team members were on site to facilitate AGU participants trying the trial version.  Link: CFHA Fall 2023 AGU Website

November 2023: 

• Congratulations to Raphael Attie and the HelioNauts.org team for reaching 500 users!! This active community has created valuable resource for heliophysics researchers. There are hundreds of conversations on a wide variety of topics (including research, data analysis, code development, meetings, job opportunities) open to anyone working in Heliophysics.

August 2023: 

• Daniel da Silva (671/UMBC) gave an invited talk at the workshop on machine Learning, data Mining and data Assimilation in Geospace (LMAG 2023) titled “Data-mining Cusp Signatures to Understand the Drivers of Dayside Multiple Reconnection”.

June 2023:  

• The 2023 Summer Intern program welcomed eight talented interns, including lead intern Omar Shalaby from New Jersey Institute of Technology.  Each intern has at least two CfHA mentors and works on a summer project that they present at the end of the summer. Additionally, interns receive intensive python training, lectures on machine learning and data science, access to HelioCloud, and many interactive activities.
• Aurora Engineering hosted an exhibit at the "Goddard on the Green" event featuring Mission Forge technology.

May 2023:

• Team members delivered summary presentations for a NASA external review committee.  Mission Forge was presented by Alex Barrie, ACME by Christopher Bard, and Capacity Building by James Harrington.
• CfHA members Daniel da Silva, Michael Kirk and Barbara Thompson participated in a site visit and team meeting at the University of West Virginia Morgantown.  The meeting focused on the joint CfHA/WVU machine learning data compression for solar space missions project. 
• Daniel da Silva presented a talk “CCSDSPy: I/O and Utilities for Binary Spacecraft Science Data Processing” at the PyHC conference.

April 2023: 

• CfHA completed selection of interns for Summer 2023.  Mentors worked to create six new data-science-focused projects.  All interns receive access to HelioCloud cloud computing resources, training classes and tutorial materials.  Each CfHA intern has at least two mentors, as well as access to DEIA program resources, intern lectures, and engagement activities.

March 2023:

• The CfHA helped organize the 3rd NASA AI /Data Science Workshop.  CfHA team members played a variety of roles, including serving on the Conference Organizing Committee, chaired plenary sessions and Focused Topic discussions, delivered several talks and presentations. 

February 2023:  

• Our NASA intern opportunity is now available!  This will be the third year of our intern program.  All applicants are welcome for both virtual and on-site internships, and a portion of the funding is reserved specifically for MUREP program interns.  This year we are joining forces with the Heliophysics Digital Resource Library to host the "HelioAnalytics and Heliophysics Digital Resource Library Data Science" intern opportunity. 

January 2023:

• Welcome to the Year of Open Science!  There will be many activities and tutorials available as part of the NASA Transform to Open Science initiative (TOPS).  CfHA has several team members dedicated to Open Science resource development.  You can start by taking the first course in the TOPS curriculum.

December 2022:

• The Center for HelioAnalytics is hosting several events at the Fall 2022 AGU meeting, including the Town Hall meeting "Data and Open Science for Capable Communities and Scientific Discovery,” special sessions, and TOPS Help Desk tutorials.  See relevant events and information at our data science engagement coordination site:  https://helioanalytics.io/Fall2022AGU

November 2022:

• Several CfHA team members attended the NASA Langley Data Science Summit, bringing together data science leaders from multiple NASA centers as well as academic, government, and industry partners. Networking events allowed the participants to make connections, strengthen partnerships, and build future collaborations.  

October 2022: 

• The Knowledge Team hosted the first Heliophysics Vocabulary Camp (VoCamp) workshop October 11-12, 2022.  The goal of this effort is to initiate a process for periodic (virtual) development of the ontology and harmonization of terms with existing (semantic) resources. 
  This new cross-disciplinary community will create, develop, and maintain a Heliophysics ontology that will serve as a foundation for future Heliophysics knowledge networks (connected knowledge graphs) and knowledge commons (a combination of intelligent information representation and the openness, governance, and trust required to create a participatory ecosystem whereby the whole community maintains and evolves the ontology/knowledge network).

September 2022:

• A NASA Pathways Internship opportunity was launched to support a undergraduate or graduate student to develop advanced machine learning models on the NASA computing cloud.  The application deadline is September 16, 2022.  Applicants can apply here:  https://www.usajobs.gov/job/675779600  More information on Pathways internships is available here:  https://www.nasa.gov/careers/pathways
• The Center for HelioAnalytics played a key role in launching the Heliophysics "Transform to Open Science" (TOPS) effort.  TOPS will provide resources and lead community activities for the Year of Open Science 2023.  
• The team faciliated multiple White Papers submitted to the National Academies of Science's Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics.  Paper topics included knowledge management, responsible/ethical AI, data environments, advanced computing, diversity and inclusivity, mentoring, as well as a wide range of scientific topics.  Additionally, the team provided a coordination resource for authors who were preparing white papers to be aware of the other papers in preparation.   

August 2022:

• The second  AGU - NASA Ethics in AI/ML Workshop concluded, which will lead to a document establishing responsible/ethical AI standards for the American Geophysical Union research community.
• Team members participated in the Triennial Earth-Sun Summit and gave presentations on advanced machine learning, physics-informed neural networks, and responsible ML.  

July 2022:

• CfHA completed a second, successful year of our MUREP-focused intern program.  This year we were able to support five undergraduate summer interns.  In addition to providing science-focused mentors, we also added DEI and Outreach advisors.
• Several team members participated in the first  AGU - NASA Ethics in AI/ML Workshop to help develop community standards around responsible use of advanced methods. 

June 2022:

• The Center for HelioAnalytics Time Series Analysis proposal was selected by the NASA@Work "Mentors for MUREP" initiative. This will support work with talented faculty at MUREP institutions. 
• The NASA West Virginia Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research hosted the inaugural NASA EPSCoR HackWeek June 13-17, 2022.  This event was coordinated through the NASA Space Grant Partnership; designed to create an inclusive, open space that fosters a collaborative learning experience, networking, innovation and sharing ideas.  Participants were introduced to educational and training activities including the problem space of Fault Diagnosis on-board spacecraft, with a focus on generating specific outcomes and novel solutions for the problem space.  All participants had full access to a HelioCloud instance and tutorials specifically developed for this activity. 
• Team members Halford and McGranaghan served as co-organizers of the 3rd Eddy Cross Disciplinary Symposium  June 6-10 2022, which served as a kickoff for the CfHA’s community Open Science activities and featured the deployment of a HelioCloud cross-collaboration instance for the symposium participants.  

May 2022:

• Ryan McGranaghan gave an invited talk during the Python in Heliophysics Coommunity (PyHC) Spring Meeting

April 2022:

• Team members Daniel da Silva, Chris Bard, Barbara Thompson, John Dorelli, Brian Thomas, Alex Barrie, and Ryan McGranaghan present posters at the 2022 Machine Learning in Heliophysics (ML-Helio) conference. 
• Ryan McGranaghan and Barbara Thompson give an invited Poster Presention The ‘Silent’ Technology We Need: The Earth and Space Science Knowledge Commons at NSF CHESS Workshop, April 12 - 14, 2022.
• The CfHA has proposed to be a mentor team as part of the NASA@Work Mentors for MUREP campaign.  This activity is a collaboration between the NASA Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) and NASA Science Mission Directorate.

March 2022:

We have a website!