The 2025 Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) Workshop; Newark, New Jersey; March 14-15, 2025

About This Grant

This award provides support to the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) Workshop to be held at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) between March 14-15, 2025. The HamSCI Workshop is an annual workshop that aims to bring together members of the amateur radio and professional radio space science communities for mutual benefit. This workshop series has led to cutting-edge work in the fields of space physics, citizen science, and the use of crowd-sourced ionospheric data. The 2025 HamSCI Workshop will feature prominent leaders in radio science, space science, and space weather. The theme of the 2025 workshop is “HamSCI’s Big Year” and refers to the immense level of organization and activity undertaken by HamSCI participants over the past year to support scientific studies of the 14 October 2023 annular and 8 April 2024 total solar eclipses. During this two-day workshop, professionals and amateurs come together to give oral and poster presentations, equipment demonstrations, and have informal discussions and networking related to both amateur radio and applicable scientific fields. Several distinguished speakers have been invited. The 2025 workshop will continue building on topics from past HamSCI meetings, including the use of amateur radio techniques for observing and understanding the physics of space weather, including the ionospheric response to solar flares and geomagnetic storms, and space weather effects on radio wave propagation. The workshop will feature prominent leaders in radio science space weather. It will also serve as a development meeting for the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station (PSWS), a project funded through the NSF Aeronomy Distributed Array of Small Instruments (DASI) program. This conference would enable (a) development of open technologies and observation networks that can be used in conjunction with existing space science and space weather infrastructure, (b) creation of materials, projects, and products that can be used by groups such as schools, museums, and other educational institutions to teach space and radio science, and (c) enhancement of public relations and outreach through venues and organizations such as the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), CQ Magazine, the HamSCI online presence, the American Geophysical Union, and the NSF Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.