Burlaga/Arctowski Medal Fellowship
Burlaga/Arctowski Medal Fellowship

The Dr. Leonard F. Burlaga/Arctowski Medal Fellowship is equivalent to a 50%-time Graduate Assistantship during the summer. The fellowship will be awarded to a full-time graduate student in good standing with exceptional potential in their field. They must be enrolled in the School of Physics and Astronomy working toward a graduate degree and associated with the Space Physics Group.

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2023 Burlaga/Arctowski Medal Fellowship Recipients

Reed Masek, Burlaga Fellowship recipient
Reed Masek

Reed is from Houston, Texas. "My research interest is in solar physics. Specifically, I look at the Sun, primarily in X-rays, to observe very faint solar flares. Since they're more difficult to observe than brighter, larger flares, less known about them, and I am using the very sensitive NuSTAR telescope to perform a statistical study in an attempt to better understand their properties."

 
Marianne Peterson
 

2022 Burlaga/Arctowski Medal Fellowship Recipients

2022:Burlaga Fellowship: Khilav Majmudar and William Setterberg
Khilav Majmudar
Khilav is originally from India.  "I work in the field of space plasma physics, specifically looking at wave propagation through the Earth's magnetosphere-ionosphere system. This would help in understanding aspects of the Earth's interaction with disturbances in its magnetic field induced by solar activity."
 
William Setterberg
"I was born in Fargo and grew up mostly in Minneapolis, but I lived in Zürich for a couple of years in high school. WIth the award money, I'm going to continue work on a solar-science focused CubeSat mission this summer. It's a relief to know I've got a solid source of funding, especially with my preliminary oral exam coming up in June! I'm most focused on studying particle acceleration in solar flares. There are a few ways this can happen (electric fields from current sheets, wave-particle resonance, and shockwave energy exchange), but it's unclear which mechanisms are present during a solar flare. The CubeSat mission I'm working on will investigate short timescale variations in solar flare hard X-ray flux to constrain which acceleration mechanisms are taking place.

2019 Burlaga/Arctowski Medal Fellowship Recipients

2019 Burlaga/Arctowski Fellowship Recipients
Jessie Duncan

Jessie is originally from Charlotte, NC. With the support of the Burlaga Fellowship, she will spend this summer continuing her analysis of data from an observation of the sun by the NuSTAR telescope. She works on both data analysis and detector development for high energy x-ray observation of the sun.

Aaron West

Aaron grew up in Edmonds, WA and has a B.S. in Comprehensive Physics from the University of Washington. The Burlaga Fellowship will support his research for summer 2019, establishing a model for plasma waves in Earth's magnetosphere. His research focuses on the intricacies of wave propagation and interaction with other waves, particles, and the earth's atmosphere. The goal is to refine predictive technologies to make space travel safer and help ground-based facilities withstand magnetic fluctuations caused by solar activity.

2017 Burlaga/Arctowski Medal Fellowship Recipient

2017 Burlaga/Arctowski Fellowship Recipient
Evan Tyler

Evan moved around a lot growing up: North Carolina, New Mexico, Germany, and Virginia. He plans to use the fellowship to attend the Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) conference and the Solar Heliospheric & INterplanetary Environment (SHINE) conference in order to present two of his research projects. Tyler will also be working on preparing this research during the Summer, as well as continuing his work as the Outreach Coordinator for MIfA. Tyler's research focus is on reconnection in the magnetotail and on high-amplitude whistler waves in the magnetosphere, using in-situ satellite measurements to study energy flows and particle dynamics in these events.