On May 1, 2020, Zihao was offered the Newkirk Fellowship from High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research of U.S.A, and will begin visits to HAO within the next three years (click here for a brief introduction on HAO staff website).
UPDATE Due to the current pandemic and institutional travelling restriction, I will postpone my visit to HAO until year 2022.
What is Newkirk Fellowship?
The following descriptions are from the website of HAO
The Newkirk Fellowship is named in honor of Gordon A. Newkirk Jr., astrophysicist, creator of the HAO white-light coronagraph and a former HAO director. Newkirk's balloon observations laid the groundwork for successful spaceborne experiments by the observatory. This fellowship program has supported graduate research at HAO for decades.
The Newkirk Fellowship provides financial support for research visits to HAO allowing for 3–6 months per year in a single visit. The total supported visit length is 9 months, which can be spread out over up to three years. A visit within one year of program acceptance is mandatory and all visits to HAO must occur while the student is enrolled in a graduate program.
HAO provides financial support to Newkirk Fellows for one visit per year, including:
- Airfare
- Living allowance of $2,000 per month to support meals and lodging
- Stipend of $2,000 per month.
Additionally, HAO will cover one trip of up to two weeks for the student's university advisor/mentor to visit HAO. The advisor/mentor visit is not mandatory, but is highly recommended and has to occur while the student is present at HAO.
As a Newkirk fellow
According to current schedule, I will seperate my visit into two parts, the first visit will start on May 2021 until September 2021, and the second one from May 2022 to October 2022.
My advisor during the visits to HAO will be Dr. Steven Tomczyk.
My current interests lie on using high resolution spectroscopic and spectro-polarimetric observations to investigate several problems associated with coronal physics, including the precise measurement of coronal magnetic field, the coronal heating problem and the origin of solar wind. As a Newkirk fellow, I will continue investigating these essential questions in coronal physics.
Newkirk fellowship will offer me a great opportunity to dig into the science data of the upcoming DKIST and UCoMP solar telescopes. Utilizing more superior solar telescopes is likely to advance our understanding for essential problems in modern solar physics.