NSO – Two-year Matching-fund Opportunities for DKIST Related Graduate/Postdoc Solar Research

The National Solar Observatory (NSO) is announcing an opportunity for financial support of graduate/postdoc student research in solar physics on the basis of matching funds. The announced opportunity is part of a larger NSF-funded program that encompasses the creation of tools for so-called level-2 data production, help to the solar community to understand the use of these tools, and preparation for the production of level-2 data from limited sets of observations from the NSO’s new flaghip facility, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on Haleakela, Maui, Hawaii. Level-2 data in this case is understood to be maps of physical quantities such as temperature, magnetic field and line-of-sight velocity, derived from level-1 calibrated spectro-polarimetric data.

In the matching-fund program the NSO seeks partners in US universities to financially support graduate students or postdocs doing research in solar physics with the requirement that this research leads to the development of a Science Use Case (SUC) to be contributed to the DKIST Critical Science Plan (CSP: www.nso.edu/telescopes/dkist/csp/), and utilizes spectral inversions. NSO’s contribution to the matching-fund positions will consist of two years of graduate/postdoc student salary, overhead, some travel expenses and a scientific workstation.

For more information on the program and sending proposals to join the program, please contact its Science Lead, Dr. Han Uitenbroek (huitenbroek@nso.edu), 3665 Discovery Dr., Boulder, CO 80303. The program has funds for seven of these positions available, each ideally spanning the timeframe of FY 2019 through 2020. The deadline for submission of a proposal is Dec 1, 2018