Space scientists are becoming ever more valuable to our society as we rely more heavily upon technical systems sensitive to conditions in the space environment, such as global positioning systems and high-speed communications networks. Communications, navigation and energy production and distribution are significantly affected by Space Weather, and the climatology of the near-Earth space environment. The ability to forecast disturbances which may impact these technologies hinges upon detailed knowledge and understanding of the connected Sun-Earth system, comprising the disciplines of solar physics, heliospheric physics, magnetospheric physics and aeronomy. This project is funded under the Faculty Development in Space Sciences program, the aim of which is to ensure the health and vitality of solar and space physics on university teaching faculties. Through the creation of new tenure-track faculty positions within the intellectual disciplines that comprise the space sciences, research topics in solar and space physics will be integrated into basic physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, geoscience, meteorology, computer science, and applied mathematics programs, and lead to the development of space physics graduate programs capable of training the next generation of leaders in this field.
This project will support a new tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign (UI), with the purpose of expanding the breadth and depth of the research and teaching expertise within the Remote Sensing and Space Sciences group. Specifically, the new hire will target several high priority areas in space science, including: high-performance scientific computing and numerical modeling and simulation of the space environment; novel electro-optics technology for probing the space environment; novel sensor technology for distributed (constellation) sensing of the space environment; and space flight hardware design and development. Building on existing key courses, the new faculty member will work with senior faculty members in the group to develop a full, formal curriculum in remote sensing and space sciences, which does not currently exist at UI. Further, UI is pioneering the development of Massive Open Online Courses, through which the new hire will have a unique opportunity to impact space science education on a global scale. The additional hire will further strengthen and grow existing partnerships with several departments and centers and will also be encouraged to pursue new partnerships broadly with the space sciences community. To this end, funds are included in the budget for the new faculty member to host small targeted workshops in the 2nd and 4th years of the program on a research topic of their choice to encourage outside partnerships. Utilizing several established and successful departmental and institution wide programs the project will work to ensure a strong focus on increasing diversity in the recruiting both of students into the program and of the new faculty member.
