I am currently a PhD student in the Physics Department at Utah State University
working with Dr. Robert Schunk and Dr. Kent Tobiska in the Space Weather Center.
What do I do? In the summer of 2009 I had a summer fellowship with the American
Meteorological Society (AMS) with a research focus on Space Weather and Global
Positioning System (GPS) Policy issues and answered questions like: how does space
weather effect GPS, who uses GPS and what is science policy? Ever since my fellowship
I've attended numerous space weather meetings and conferences. Every interaction
I’ve had with government, industry, and academic representatives of the space weather
community as well as a main underlying theme at every conference I’ve attended is this:
there is a strong need for understanding the Sun-Earth connection and being able to
capture that on a model with the optimal objective of producing predictions with
significant lead time especially when it comes to disruptions in the ionosphere.
Why am I interested in this? Because of my 2009 AMS summer fellowship I've become
infatuated with the GPS industry and had the chance to pick apart the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center’s navigational
products customer list. Firsthand I saw all the unique ways GPS is used and how this
infrastructure could see devastation if GPS were to be disrupted by a space weather
phenomena.
Why USU? The dynamic team at USU offers great research opportunities that will provide
breakthroughs in ionospheric modeling used especially for GPS issues, something crucially
needed as our society becomes more and more reliant on GPS.
