People

Zachary Girazian, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Associate Research Scientist/Engineer
Zach uses spacecraft data to study how the upper atmospheres and ionospheres of Venus and Mars are impacted by the Sun and space environment. He has participated on the science teams of ESA’s Mars Express and Venus Express missions, and is currently a member on the science team of NASA’s MAVEN mission. Zach also has an excellent track record of obtaining funding; he received NASA fellowships as both a graduate student and postdoc, and has won two NASA grants as Principal Investigator while at the University of Iowa.

Eudes Gomes da Silva
Title/Position
Graduate Research Assistant

John A. Goree, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor
John A. Goree is a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research interests include experimental plasma physics, statistical physics and soft condensed matter physics.

Chad Gorgen
Title/Position
Graduate Research Assistant

Larry J. Granroth
Title/Position
Systems Architect
Larry's specialty is research computing support, with over 40 years of experience with the world's foremost radio and plasma wave research group founded by Prof Donald Gurnett. He has been the lead software developer for multiple NASA missions, been involved with the Planetary Data System since its inception, designed and implemented the computing infrastructure supporting numerous spaceflight projects, and most importantly "made things work". He has expert knowledge in data analysis, scientific programming, computing infrastructure, systems administration, and data archiving.

Kenton Greene
Title/Position
Graduate Research Assistant
Kenton Greene is involved in space physics experimentation and instrumentation research. His current work focuses on the optimization and characterization of a new high-stability fluxgate magnetometer design called the Tesseract Sensor which will fly on the upcoming ACES-II sounding rockets and TRACERS satellite missions to measure the field aligned currents in the magnetosphere.

Philip Griffin
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Joseph Groene
Title/Position
Application Developer

Tyler Grover
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Tyler Grover has research interests in mathematical physics: string theory, gravitation, and quantum field theories. He currently works with Dr. Vincent G. J. Rodgers exploring features of Thomas-Whitehead Projective Gravity. Current projects include search for space-time solutions and predicted corrections for particle physics.

Sean Gunderson
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Graduate Student Mentor
Sean Gunderson’s interest is in the properties and evolution of hot stars. His research is primarily focused on the hypersonic stellar winds of these stars using theoretical models and high energy light spectra. The research is an intersection between high energy astrophysics and plasma physics; particularly the physics of plasma shocks that generate X-rays within the stellar winds.

Jasper S. Halekas, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor
Jasper Halekas’s research seeks to broaden our understanding of the impact of the Sun and the solar wind on our solar system and its evolution. To accomplish this, he designs and builds instruments to measure charged particles around moons and planets and in the interplanetary medium. Jasper's research spans planetary science and space physics, with a unifying theme the use of charged particle measurements to remotely infer plasma processes. He is the instrument lead or instrument scientist for particle sensors on the MAVEN, Parker Solar Probe, and TRACERS spacecraft, and the deputy PI for the THEMIS-ARTEMIS and Lunar Vertex missions.

Kevin Hall
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Kevin has interests in simulating how exoplanets would look within simulated data from future Direct Imaging missions and determine what characteristics can be extracted from the system.

Henry Hammer
Title/Position
Graduate Research Assistant

Zheyue Hang
Title/Position
Graduate Student
Zheyue Hang is currently working with Professor Yannick Meurice on the field of quantum computing. She is also interested in mathematical physics and condensed matter.

Christian Hansen
Title/Position
Aerospace Project Engineer (Mechanical)
Christian is a mechanical engineer in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa and has been supporting various spaceflight projects since 2018. Christian’s core competencies are CAD modeling of complex parts and assemblies for both ground and spaceflight applications, steady state conductive thermal analysis, structural analysis of launch loads (vibration and static), and thermal vacuum systems. His recent work has been developing the MAGIC (MAGnetometers for Innovation and Capability) payload as well as the TRACERS ACE (Analyzer for Cusp Electrons) instrument.

Nicholas Harshman
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

David Hartley, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Assistant Research Scientist/Engineer
Dave uses in-situ spacecraft observations to study the dynamics of the Earth’s magnetosphere. He uses plasma wave observations from the EMFISIS instrument on NASA’s Van Allen Probes satellite mission, as well as MMS measurements, to study very low frequency (VLF) waves which play a critical role in driving variations in the different particle populations contained within the inner magnetosphere. Dave is currently Principal Investigator of two NASA grants, and Co-Investigator on an NSF-GEM grant.

Syed Hassan Abbas Bukhari
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Elizabeth Healy
Title/Position
Academic Advisor

Kenneth Heitritter, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Kenneth Heitritter is interested in research that explores different approaches to the quantization of gravitational phenomena and their corresponding phenomenology. Currently, he works with Professor Vincent Rodgers on a project which extends projective structures in two-dimensional quantum gravity to a setting of four-dimensional spacetime.

Nathan Helvy
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Sarah Henderson
Title/Position
Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Advisory Committee Member
Sarah Henderson is interested in studying space plasma physics. She is working under the advisory of Professor Jasper Halekas analyzing various sets of MAVEN data to better understand the many ways in which the solar wind interacts with the Martian atmosphere.


Keri Hoadley, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Assistant Professor
Keri Hoadley is an expert in far-ultraviolet astrophysics. She studies a wide variety of astronomical topics, including the interstellar gas, star and planet formation, the nearly invisible gas surrounding all galaxies, and stellar collisions. She is also a leader in space ultraviolet spectrographs and telescopes, managing a variety of NASA suborbital missions (and currently spearheading the next flight of FIREBall-2) and being a core team member on future UV space missions (Aspera, Hyperion). She secured a prize postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech prior to her arrival at the University of Iowa for her leadership role on FIREBall-2. In 2021, she received NASA's prestigious Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship in Astrophysics for rising future PIs among early career scientists.

George Hospodarsky, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Research Scientist/Engineer
George has over 30 years of experience in the design, testing, calibration, operation, and analysis of scientific data from radio and plasma wave instruments and sensors flown on spacecraft and sounding rockets, including the TRACERS, Galileo, Juno, Cassini, Van Allen Probes, VIPER, Wind and Polar missions. Responsible for search coil magnetometer development, performance and calibration for the Polar, Wind, Juno, Van Allen Probes, VIPER and TRACERS missions. Research is mainly on the radio and plasma waves found in the magnetospheres of the outer planets and Earth.

Gregory G. Howes, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor
Gregory G. Howes is a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research interests include theoretical and computational plasma physics.

Rui Huang
Title/Position
Graduate Research Assistant
Rui Huang is interested in theoretical and computational astrophysics. They are currently working with Professor Greg Howes on a project studying the plasma turbulence theory.

Cyerra Hutchins
Title/Position
Academic Program Management Associate

Masafumi Imai
Title/Position
Assistant Research Scientist/Engineer

F D Ingram
Title/Position
Research Scientist/Engineer
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