Future Staffing. With the completion of new facilities and capabilities such as adaptive optics, SOLIS, GONG, and ATST, the quality and quantity of NSO data and observational capabilities will be substantially enhanced. Taking advantage of these new facilities will require increased scientific efforts, continued development of new instrumentation, enhancement of the NSO Digital Library, and linkage to a Virtual Solar Observatory. The permanent NSO scientific staff of 16 currently consists of 6 tenured astronomers (including the Director), 4 tenure-track astronomers, 1 senior scientist, and 5 support scientists. Most of the senior scientific staff are deeply involved in projects (as seen from the staff list above). The near- term addition of four NSO postdoctoral positions, two at each site, would substantially enhance the scientific output of the NSO and increase its support of users. More importantly, it would begin training the next generation of solar observational scientists and provide a science cadre that can fully exploit the new capabilities provided by the ATST. We anticipate that many of the scientists filling these postdoctoral positions would eventually assume positions at universities, thus fulfilling one of the high priorities of the National Research Council’s decadal report, “Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium” (Decadal Survey), i.e., to build up the presence of solar physicists at universities. The cost of adding four postdoctoral positions to the NSO staff would be approximately $350K per year. In the longer-term, the NSO permanent scientific staff will need to grow by several positions to effectively support its new facilities. A dedicated ATST scientific staff is required to optimize ATST scientific capabilities. Early on, scientists will participate in commissioning, testing and acceptance. After final commissioning, the staff will be ready to provide expertise in all areas of ATST science operations. Particular areas of needed expertise for science and engineering include conventional and multi-conjugate adaptive optics, active optics, polarimetry in the visible, near-IR and thermal IR, using both spectrographs and filters, image restoration through techniques such as phase diversity and speckle, and coronal observing techniques and analysis. Expertise in various areas where the ATST will provide breakthrough data, such as plasma-field interactions, magneto-convection, atmospheric heating, and origins of solar activity will be required. ...
