Click the tabs below to learn a basic introduction about my current and previous research and engineering projects. If you would like detailed information on my research, please visit my semi-CV page.
Recent presentations
Space Physics Research > Earth Modeling > Auroral Conductance Model Validation
American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2022 talk 'An Extended Metric Study of SWMF Conductance Model Influences on Estimating FACs: Effectiveness of semi-physical MAGNetosphere-Ionosphere-Thermosphere (MAGNIT) Model
Our sun, despite providing us with warmth and light, also produces solar storms expelling massive amounts of charged particles harmful to electronics and life. Most planets in our solar system have global magnetic fields that spread over space in a region called a magnetosphere. In these magnetospheres, charged particlesmove cohesively as a charged fluid in patterns dictated by the magnetic field.
While the Earth's magnetosphere acts like a giant bubble to protect us on the surface, at the poles some of the charged particles leak into and interact with the Earth's atmosphere, which we see as the beautiful aurora borealis. An invisible consequence is the currents that it generates in electrical grids in polar regions (like North America or Europe), making it important to predict when and how much charged particles exist in our ionosphere. The particles leaking from the magnetosphere into the Earth's ionosphere are called 'auroral precipitation', and 'auroral or ionospheric conductance' describes how well currents can pass through the Earth's ionosphere.
Copmared to Earth's magnetosphere, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have an enhanced magnetosphere. Because the giants rotate very quickly, the motion of plasma is not only driven by the solar wind, but the corotation of the magnetic field. Both the gas giants also have moons producing their own plasma. How the internally-produced plasma moves around the system and is lost to outer space is an open-ended question, and includes phenomena like aurora and 'Rayleigh-Taylor like injections'.
Space is vast and its physics happens at a wide variety of spatialtemporal scales, making modeling phenomena in space weather quite difficult. The system is split into many different subregions, each forming a different model that communicate with one-another - an example full set of models is the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF). There is a lot of current work being developed to add-to and keep the model up-to-date. Two examples are listed below:
Systems Engineering: SE is a field of engineering and management process that can be applied to many different disciplines. Keeping in mind the system picture, the process includes iterations of design, testing, and verification and validation to deliver a high-quality product.
Design:These projects involved using SE practices and sub-products to develop a report and/or proposal explaining the design of a system.
'MEGASat' - 6U Cubesat for BlueHalo Corporation to deploy technology demonstration of metamaterial optics including applications to solar cells and star trackers. TBE
Physics research covers a wide discipline of many lengthscales. Some research topics I have dablled in during my undergraduate education are listed here.