Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to invite input from the solar and heliophysics community on the identification of research “Grand Challenges” in our field, in the context of the evolving UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) landscape.

Following a recent UKRI DRI Town Hall meeting, it is becoming clear that access to the upcoming New National Supercomputing Service (NNSS) — a major GPU-based system planned for deployment in Edinburgh (expected early 2028) — will be primarily organised around Grand Challenge programmes.

At present, the precise definition of “Grand Challenges” is still evolving. However, there is a real and pressing need for our community to articulate clearly what our major scientific challenges are. Without this, there is a risk that plasma astrophysics and space/solar physics may not be considered to fit into this narrative, potentially limiting or even blocking future access to the NNSS.

We are, therefore, seeking short community input to help define these challenges.

Requested input:

Please provide a concise description of one or more Grand Challenges in solar/heliophysics under the following headings:

Statement of the research Grand Challenge
(max 100 words; this may be curiosity-driven)

Potential broader impact
(max 150 words; e.g. links to other UKRI research areas, methodological advances such as computational techniques, data science, AI, etc.)

Relevance to UK Industrial Strategy priority areas
(max 150 words; e.g. advanced computing, energy, resilience, space technologies — see UKRI priorities)

Next steps:

Please send your contributions by Friday 26 June. Submissions will be collated and discussed at an upcoming DiRAC board meeting in early July.

We would strongly encourage participation from across the community, including those working in theory, simulation, data analysis and observationally-driven modelling. A broad and representative input will be essential to ensure that our field is well positioned in the emerging DRI framework.

Please send your inputs to david.mactaggart@glasgow.ac.uk and t.d.arber@warwick.ac.uk.

With best wishes,
Tony Arber and David MacTaggart