Post-Doctoral Researchers
Graduate Student Researchers
Jayasri Joseph
Jayasri is a graduate student working for Prof. Jaynes. She is currently doing research on wave-particle interactions in Earth's magnetosphere as well as Jupiter's magnetosphere. She has previously worked on designing and implementing the electrical components necessary for operating the PLASMIC device, in particular Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). |
Sanjay Chepuri
Sanjay is a graduate student working for Professor Jaynes. He is currently working on data from MMS. He has a B.A. in Physics from Carleton College, where his research was in radio astronomy, specifically pulsars. He also enjoys trivia and playing the viola. |
Keith Vidal
Keith is a PhD student working with Professor Jaynes. He is currently studying wave-particle interactions between electrons and chorus waves in the Earth’s magnetosphere. He received a B.S. in Physiology in 2009, B.A. in Physics in 2015, and M.S. in Physics in 2021 from the University of Iowa. His master thesis was over long-ranged correlations in strongly magnetized plasmas. Before his graduate studies, he was a high school science teacher. |
Jodie McLennan
Jodie is a graduate student working for Prof. Jaynes. She received a B.S. in Physics and Math from Wheaton College and a M.S. in Astrophysics from the University of St Andrews. Her master’s thesis involved modeling planetary bow shocks and its potential to confine the planet’s atmospheric escape. She is currently studying pulsating aurora. Her other interests include reading, biking and knitting with a cup of tea. |
John Momberg
John is a graduate student who has worked with Professor Jaynes since October 2022. He graduated from Iowa with a B.S. in Astronomy and Physics in May 2022. Following his graduation, he worked doing research under Professor Jaynes for about a year before starting grad school at Iowa in August 2023. John's current research focuses on analyzing data from the Van Allen probes and THEMIS cameras to investigate the relationship between pulsating aurora and substorm-injected electrons. In his free time, he likes biking and working out. |
Post-Baccalaureate Researchers
Susanne Byrd
Susanne is a post-baccalaureate researcher who began working with Prof. Jaynes since May 2023. She has a B.S in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Iowa and plans to attend graduate school next academic year. Her project involves developing an algorithm to detect substorm particle injections and investigating factors that affect the energy of injected particles. Her hobbies include tennis, fencing, art, and Mario Kart. She has a cat named Carol.
Susanne is a post-baccalaureate researcher who began working with Prof. Jaynes since May 2023. She has a B.S in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Iowa and plans to attend graduate school next academic year. Her project involves developing an algorithm to detect substorm particle injections and investigating factors that affect the energy of injected particles. Her hobbies include tennis, fencing, art, and Mario Kart. She has a cat named Carol.
Undergraduate Researchers
Kyle Junkunc
Kyle is a fourth-year undergraduate at The University of Iowa studying Physics and Astronomy. He has been with the research group since the beginning of summer 2022. Over the course of that summer, he revised various labs involving microcontrollers including one to detect cosmic rays for the summer Edge of Space Academy. His current research involves data analysis of the properties of high-energy particles detected by earth-orbiting satellites such as the Van Allen probes. This work all falls under the umbrella of better understanding of the pulsating aurora. In his free time, he likes to explore and try new hobbies with my friends.
Kyle is a fourth-year undergraduate at The University of Iowa studying Physics and Astronomy. He has been with the research group since the beginning of summer 2022. Over the course of that summer, he revised various labs involving microcontrollers including one to detect cosmic rays for the summer Edge of Space Academy. His current research involves data analysis of the properties of high-energy particles detected by earth-orbiting satellites such as the Van Allen probes. This work all falls under the umbrella of better understanding of the pulsating aurora. In his free time, he likes to explore and try new hobbies with my friends.
Research Group Alumni
Kawther Rouabhi
Kawther Rouabhi began research with Professor Jaynes in July 2020. She studied Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Iowa with an elective focus in big data and machine learning applications and worked with the Jaynes Research Group to develop a machine learning model that may identify pulsating aurora events using all-sky imager data. Kawther’s research interests span a wide range of earth and space science topics, from global climate change to space weather throughout the solar system. What she enjoys most as a researcher (and in general) is traveling to new places and meeting diverse people from around the world. Kawther has gone on to pursue a graduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder. |
Joshua Doucette
Joshua worked with Professor Jaynes to create programs to analyze data for electron precipitation collected from NASA instruments on NOAA weather satellites. In his spare time, he plays guitar and studies. Josh has gone on to pursue a graduate degree in Physics at the University of Wisconsin Madison. |
Collin Kolars
Collin worked with the Jaynes Research Group as an undergraduate research student earning a B.S. in applied physics from the University of Iowa. He is interested in researching the application of machine learning methods on auroral imaging data to study the pulsating aurora. His other interests include hackathons, multicopters, and hiking. He graduated in 2019. |
Connor Pollock
Connor worked as a research intern for the Jaynes Research Group from June 2018 to July 2020. His work involved Geant simulations of particle detectors for PLASMIC as well as using IDL for developing categorization equations. He has a B.A. in physics from Dartmouth College. His other interests include silversmithing and paleontology. Connor left the group to pursue a PhD in physics at Montana State University. |
Rachael Filwett, Ph.D.
Dr. Rachel Filwett was a postdoctoral researcher working for Professor Jaynes until January 2023, when she started a new position as an Assistant Professor at Montana State University in Bozeman. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2018, and additionally earned a M.S. from there in 2016 and a B.S. from Valparaiso University in Physics and East Asian Studies in 2013. She currently researches the properties of SEPs as they access the radiation belts using data from the Van Allen Probes. Her previous research includes a dissertation entitled "Measuring the Sources and Acceleration Mechanisms of Suprathermal Heavy Ions in Stream Interaction Regions near 1 AU" Dr. Filwett's other research interests include the development of space instrumentation – particularly for CubeSats and the magnetospheres of the Ice Giants. |
Riley Troyer, Ph.D.
Riley was a PhD student with Professor Jaynes starting in January 2019 and graduated in May 2023. He used incoherent scatter radar, and satellite measurements to study the energy and source of pulsating aurora. He was also involved with the LAMP rocket mission. He received a B.S. in physics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2018. His undergraduate thesis there involved studying wind speeds at around 240 km above Antarctica to narrow down possibilities for extra atmospheric mass that appears to be held up in the cusp region of the Earth’s magnetic field. He is originally from Fairbanks, Alaska, and his other interests include science policy and competitive cycling. “Growing up in Alaska I was lucky enough to witness the Aurora on countless occasions and now I get to use my physics knowledge to study this incredible phenomena.” |
Garry Gao
Garry is a post-baccalaureate student who began research with Professor Jaynes in the summer of 2022. He has a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Computer Science from Grinnell College in 2022. His undergraduate work involves computer simulations of scale-free networks. He is currently working with Jaynes Research Group to study pulsating aurora and use algorithms to recognize it. |