2024 NASA Jack Eddy Postdoctoral Fellows!

UCAR | CPAESS and NASA are excited to welcome five new postdoctoral fellows who will be beginning their interdisciplinary research projects contributing to the field of heliophysics. These fellows are the new 2023-2024 class of NASA’s Jack Eddy Postdoctoral Fellowship, supported by NASA's Living With a Star Program (LWS)  and selected by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)’s  Cooperative Program for the Advancement of Earth System Science (CPAESS). 

Established in 2009, this prestigious fellowship program is named after pioneering solar researcher John A. “Jack” Eddy.  The two-year fellowship is designed to train the next generation of heliophysics researchers. It matches early-career PhDs with experienced scientists at U.S. host research institutions. 

Dr. Lika Guhathakurta, lead program scientist for NASA’s Living With a Star Program (LWS 2001-2016) worked with and admired Eddy for years. He had been a consultant to the LWS program, and both he and Guhathakurta championed interdisciplinary study of the Sun’s relationship to Earth. After his death in 2009, Guhathakurta paid Eddy tribute by naming the new LWS postdoctoral fellowship after him. Of the fellowship, Lika shared “A proud moment for this legacy program of fifteen years and the selection of five new budding scientists with a broad interdisciplinary skill set to join the Jack Eddy Fellowship Program. “

“UCAR | CPAESS is honored to manage the NASA Jack Eddy Postdoctoral Fellowship. We have partnered with NASA since 2006 working to foster heliophysics as an integrated science, teaching a new generation of researchers to engage in cross-disciplinary research and communication. ” said Hanne Mauriello, Director of UCAR's Scientific Partnerships and Services Center (SPS) and CPAESS.

Heliophysics embraces all science aspects of the Sun-Solar System, and includes many of the basic physical processes found in our solar system, the laboratory, and throughout the universe. These processes generally involve the interactions of ionized gases (plasmas) with electromagnetic and gravitational fields, and to some extent with neutral matter. The physical domain of interest ranges from deep inside the Sun to the beginning of interstellar medium as well as planetary atmospheres including Earth's upper atmosphere. Within this broad science discipline, LWS is a program designed to develop the scientific understanding required for the nation to address effectively those aspects of the Sun-Earth system that affect life and society. Two major topics of focus for LWS are the science of space weather and of the Sun-climate connection.

Each fellow will research at a host institution typically other than their Ph.D. university, with a mentor for two years. The goal of this postdoctoral program is to train Sun-Earth system researchers that cross the traditional Heliophysics subdomains of the Sun, heliosphere, magnetosphere, and ionosphere/upper atmosphere, as well as Sun-climate investigations.

A sincere congratulations to our new fellows!

2024 NASA Jack Eddy Postdoctoral Fellowship Awardees

Sunil Kumar 

Proposal Topic: Investigations to quantify the impact of lower atmospheric forcing on the upper atmosphere in response to rising of CO2 concentrations

PhD Institution: Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India

Host: Dr. Jens Oberheide, Clemson University

Prateek Mayank 

Proposal Topic: Towards Next–Generation Space Weather Forecasting: A ML–MHD Hybrid Approach

PhD Institution: Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India

Host: Dr. Enrico Camporeale, University of Colorado, Boulder

Morgan Stores 

Proposal Topic: Constraining Solar Flare Acceleration Regions using a Combination of Spectroscopic Observations and Kinetic Modelling

PhD Institution: Northumbria University, U.K.

Host: Dr. Lindsay Glesener,  University of Minnesota

Waqar Younas

Proposal Topic: Statistical analysis of prompt penetrating electric fields during CME and HSSW generated storms

PhD Institution: Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad

Host: Yukitoshi Nishimura, Boston University

Yang Zhang 

Proposal Topic: Laboratory Study of Particle Acceleration by Multiscale Magnetic Reconnection

PhD Institution: California Institute of Technology

Host: Dr. ​​Hantao Ji, Princeton University

Learn more about the NASA Jack Eddy Postdoctoral Fellows and alumni as well as the fellowship, and NASA’s partnership with UCAR | CPAESS.