VERSIM - a Brief History

The VERSIM group had its origins in the 1950s as a committee of Commission IV of URSI, and in 1969 was established as a joint committee of Commissions III and IV on Whistlers in the Magnetosphere, chaired by D.L. Carpenter of Stanford University. Following the URSI General Assembly at Lima in 1975, the group was reconstituted as a joint working group of URSI and IAGA on Passive Electromagnetic Probing of the Magnetosphere, under URSI Commissions G and H and IAGA Divisions II and III. The working group was endorsed by IAGA at its meeting in Grenoble later the same year and was constituted to have two co-chairmen, one from IAGA and one from URSI, as shown below:
 
 
URSI

 Co-chairman
IAGA

 Co-chairman
1975-1981 D. L. Carpenter 1975-1981 M. J. Rycroft
1981-1984 K. Tsuruda 1981-2003 A. J. Smith
1984-1996 U. S. Inan 2003-2013 C. J. Rodger
1996-2005 M. Parrot 2013- J. Bortnik
2005- J. Lichtenberger    

The name of the working group was changed in 1989 to VERSIM (VLF/ELF Remote Sensing of the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere) which was endorsed by IAGA at its General Assembly in Exeter the same year, and by URSI at its General Assembly in Prague the following year. A further minor change of name (but not acronym) to VLF/ELF Remote Sensing of Ionospheres and Magnetospheres was accepted at the Lille URSI General Assembly in 1996.

 

VERSIM Workshops

Since 2004 the VERSIM working group have organised a workshop roughly every 2 years, timed to fall between the large assembles of IAGA and URSI. These work shops have led to a revitalisation of the VERSIM community, with considerably more collaboration occurring between members and sparking more links between VERSIM researchers.

 

Date

Location

2004

Sodankyla, Finland

2006

Sodankyla, Finland

2008

Tihany, Hungary

2010

Prague, Czech Republic

2012

Sao Paulo, Brazil

2014

Dunedin, New Zealand

 

Craig J. Rodger, IAGA Co-chairman of VERSIM.

Last Revised 27 August 2013
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