Magnetic Reconnection Explosive Energy Conversion in Space Plasmas

Dr. Rumi Nakamura is a group leader at the Space Research Institute (IWF), Austrian Academy of Sciences and Dozent (Lecturer) at University of Graz. Her research interests are plasma transport and acceleration in the magnetosphere, magnetic reconnection, substorm and storm dynamics. She received her doctorate degrees in geophysics from University of Tokyo. She is involved in several space plasma physics missions such as Cluster, DoubleStar, THEMIS as a Co-Investigator and in Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission leading the Active Spacecraft Potential Control (ASPOC) instrument. She was awarded the Tanakadate Award from the Society of Geomagnetism and Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences (SGEPSS) and the Julius-Bartels Medal from the European Geosciences Union (EGU). She is a Fellow of American Geophysical Union (AGU) and a Member of Austrian Academy of Sciences, International Academy of Astronautics, Academia Europaea and European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Dr. James L. Burch is an experimental space plasma physicist specializing in dynamical phenomena associated with the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetospheres of Earth, Saturn and comets. He received his PhD degree from Rice University. He was Principal Investigator of the NASA IMAGE mission, which was the first mission to conduct comprehensive multi-spectral imaging of the Earth's magnetosphere. He served as Principal Investigaor of the Ion and Electron Sensor for the European Space Agency Rosetta Comet Mission. His current research involves analysis of data from the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, for which he serves as Science Principal Investigator. For MMS he designed a new generation plasma composition analyzer that greatly improves the accuracy of minor ion detection in space plasmas. With MMS data Dr. Burch has reported the first electron-scale measurements of magnetic reconnection in space, which have led to many transformational science results on reconnection by him and the many members of the MMS team. He currently is principal investigator for the Mass Spectrometer for Planetary Exploration (MASPEX) for the NASA Europa Clipper Mission. Dr. Burch is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and is a recipient of the AGU Fleming Medal and Bowie Medal as well as the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.