Assistant Professor Allison Jaynes has received an $84,000 NASA Heliophysics Supporting Research award from UCLA to investigate radiation belt dynamics. 

The project, titled “The role of local and radial diffusion in the multi-MeV electron acceleration” will focus on determining which of several mechanisms are responsible for accelerating electrons to the very highest energies in Earth's radiation belts. The project team will use a combination of data and state-of-the-art modeling to investigate. The University of Iowa’s contribution will include work by a graduate student to analyze the data and data-model comparison.