LWS TR&T Focus Teams:

Cross-Discipline Infrastructure Building Programs

Team Leader:
Team Research Plan:
Next Team Meeting: TBD
Team-Maintained Web Site: TBD
Team Publications: TBD
Team Members:
Meg Austin (UCAR)
Tim Fuller-Rowell (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Petrus Martens (Montana State University)
James McAteer (New Mexico State University)

Target Description: One of the major challenges facing the LWS Program is the development of a research community that can cross traditional discipline boundaries and attack the system-wide problems that are central to understanding and modeling the Sun-Solar System connection. In order to address this challenge, proposals to this LWS TR&T program may include one or more of the following infrastructure-building elements: cross-disciplinary workshops, summer schools, and postdoctoral fellowships programs. Most of these activities will be supported through formal proposals to the TR&T program as part of the regular proposal cycle. In all cases, two extra pages will be allowed to the page limit for the science/technical/management section of the proposal (see Section 3 below) for each of these activities.

Support of LWS Workshops/Campaigns: Given the goals of the Infrastructure Building Program, there are several guidelines that successful requests for workshop/ campaign support must satisfy:

The workshop must address a science or technology topic that is both timely and important to the goals of the LWS program.
Workshops must focus on comparing and validating tools that have already been developed. Examples of possible workshops include 1) predicting all clear forecasting, 2) comparison of helioseismic techniques, and 3) velocity estimation methods.
Other workshop topics must be cross-disciplinary in nature and bring together researchers from different disciplines encompassed by the LWS program.
Although there are no restrictions as to where the workshop will be held, preference should be given to locations that are convenient and cost-effective for LWS researchers and students.
Workshops that encourage the training of new researchers in LWS system science are strongly encouraged.
Workshops that leverage funding from other institutions and agencies are strongly encouraged.

Support of LWS Summer Schools for early career scientists: The details of the summer school (e.g., format, location, duration, etc.) are left to the proposer to define. However, proposals should provide convincing evidence concerning the breadth of the topics to be considered, the means to be taken to assure participation by recognized research/ education authorities, and any institutional support that may be forthcoming.
Management of Postdoctoral Fellowship Programs: The details of the fellowship program format are left to the proposer to define. The goals and objectives of the program, topic areas to be covered, and specific program details should be outlined by the proposer, providing evidence of past successes.

· Global and multi-point observations to characterize and investigate the energization and transport processes that lead to enhanced particle pressure in the inner magnetosphere.
· Studies of potential plasma processes responsible for the relevant plasma transport inward to the inner magnetosphere.
· Studies of how plasma energization and transport impact the dynamics in the inner magnetosphere including:
- how the dynamics of the ring current affects the structure of the magnetic and electric fields,
- how the wave environment of the inner magnetosphere is altered, and
- how the dynamics of the outer radiation belts are affected by the processes above.
· Investigations on how the state of the inner magnetospheric, e.g. structure of the ring current and convection electric field, affect the evolution of the magnetotail.