Researcher and Lecturer in Space Plasma Physics

Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society

Academic Posts & Education:

Since 01/2024: Research Fellow/Lecturer, Lancaster University, UK.

UKRI STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow undertaking independent research to understand the energy pathways of Earth's magnetosphere.

• External PhD examiner: University of Southampton, UK (April 2024); University of Bergen, Norway (June 2024).
• Member of MIST Council.
• Chair of MIST Awards Taskforce, a national EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) initiative.
• Lead organiser of the RAS Discussion meeting on "Meeting the Challenges of Limited Observations for the Global Modelling of the Ionosphere-Thermosphere System" (08/03/2024).
• Co-Lead of Campus in the City project: A Journey Through the Solar System - Public Engagement activity for the entire family (~180 visitors), 12/04/2023, Lancaster, UK.
• Member of UK Space Weather and Space Environment Conference Scientific Organising Committee (2024).

03/2017-12/2023: Senior Research Associate, Lancaster University, UK; Line Manager: Dr. Adrian Grocott.

Undertaking of original research on the NERC-funded projects “Time Variability of the ionospheric electric field: solar wind driving and atmospheric feedback” (2017-2020) and “SD-WACCM: Predicting the Upper Atmospheric Response to Extremes of Space Weather Forcing” (2020-2023):

• Winner of the British Science Association Early Career Lectureship Prize in Physical sciences and mathematics 2022.
• Processing and archiving of 24 years of raw data (> 30 TB) from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN).
• Co-author of 26 peer-reviewed articles, 8 unreviewed articles, and 11 open-source software packages (downloaded more than 420 times).
• 19 invited talks.
• Co-supervisor of two Masters students in Statistics (with Dr A. Gibberd).
• Co-supervisor of PhD student in Physics (with Dr A. Grocott).
• Lead organiser of Virtual Autumn MIST Meeting 2020 & 2021.
• Co-organiser of oral/poster session at AGU Fall Meeting: The Causes and Impacts of Uncertainties in the Solar Wind on Driving Planetary Magnetospheres (SM11B and SM13C).
• Seminar coordinator for the Space and Planetary Physics Group (2017-2018) (organisation of external speakers and management of ~£1k budget).
• Co-organiser of the RAS Discussion meeting on “The Global Response of the Terrestrial Mangetosphere during Storms and Substorms” (2019) and "Global Monitoring of Geospace" (2023) and LOC member for National Astronomy Meeting 2019 and STFC Advanced Summer School in Space Plasma Physics (Sept. 2019).
• Participant in national outreach competition I’m a Scientist Get me out of here and active participant in Physics department outreach programme.
• Leader of widening-participation project with 10 A-Level students from rural Lancashire (2019/2020).

2013–2017: PhD studying Solar wind-magnetosphere driving at Earth, University of Leicester, UK; Supervisors: Prof. S. E. Milan & Dr. T. K. Yeoman.

• Analysis using spacecraft data, magnetometers, radars and numerical modelling.
• 3 first author papers: Using physics-based model to test understanding of ionospheric flows with spacecraft and radar data [Walach et al., 2017a]; Comparative studies of magnetospheric responses to solar wind driving [Walach and Milan 2015, Walach et al., 2017b].
• Undergraduate teaching: Laboratory supervision and marking of lab notebooks.
• Active participation of group’s outreach programme.
• Organiser of PhD student Jouranl Club (2016).
• Winner of the Rishbeth Prize for the Best Student Talk, National Astronomy Meeting, 2015.
• Joint First Place of the 3-Minute Wonder Competition, IoP Midlands Division, 2014.

2009–2013: 1st class Honors from the MPhys course in Physics, University of Leicester, UK.

• Masters dissertation on auroral observations of substorms supervised by Prof. S.E. Milan.

Summer 2010: Research Assistant with Prof. J. Remedios & Dr. H. Sembhi in the Earth Observation Group, University of Leicester, UK.

• Developing improved cloud flagging procedures for Envisat data above water to estimate sea surface temperatures.

Grants & Prizes:

2023:

• UKRI STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (£514k FEC): Principal Investigator.

2022:

• 2022 Winner of the British Science Association Lecture Prize in Physical sciences and mathematics.

2019:

• NERC Standard Grant (£704k FEC): Researcher Co-Investigator.
• Royal Astronomical Society Small Grant Scheme (£1.4k): Funding for discussion meeting.
• Runner-up in the Seaborgium zone of I’m a Scientist Get me out of here.

2016:

• Shortlisted for the University of Leicester Research Images Competition.

2015:

• Royal Astronomical Society Small Grant Scheme (~£1k):Funding to attend AGU Fall Meeting (San Francisco, US).
• Royal Astronomical Society Small Grant Scheme (~£1k):Best Student Talk: Rishbeth Prize at the National Astronomy Meeting.

2014:

• Joint First Place: 3-Minute Wonder Competition, Institute of Physics, Midlands Division.

Invited Talks:

• Invited conference and workshop talks:
• Invited EDI talk at National Astronomy Meeting, 04/07/2023, Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
• International Space Science Institute Team 546 Meeting, 28/03/2023, International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland.
• National Astronomy Meeting, 15/07/2022, University of Warwick, UK.
• Canadian Division of Atmospheric and Space Physics Workshop (Canada), 24/02/2022, virtual.
• 14th International Conference on Substorms, 03/10/2019, Tromsø, Norway.
• Invited seminar talks:
• Northumbria University, 20/03/2023, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
• Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 28/09/2023, Dublin, Ireland.
• University of Saskatchewan (Canada), 28/06/2022, virtual.
• MIST Online Seminar Series (UK), 07/06/2022, virtual.
• Magnetosphere Online Seminar Series (US), 21/03/2022, virtual.
• Dartmouth College (US), 02/03/2021, virtual.
• Magnetospheres Online Seminar Series (US), 21/03/2022, virtual.
• MIST Online Seminar Series (UK), 07/06/2022, virtual.
• University of Saskatchewan (Canada), 28/06/2022, virtual.
• Canadian Division of Atmospheric and Space Physics (Canada), 24/02/2022, virtual.
• Dartmouth College (US), 02/03/2020, virtual.
• Ground Induced Currents & Machine Learning Group (US), 05/05/2020, virtual.
• University of Southampton, 30/04/2019, Southampton, UK.
• Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL), 19/03/2019, Surrey, UK.
• University of Leicester, 16/01/2019, Leicester, UK.
• Lancaster University, 18/03/2017, Lancaster, UK.
• Swedish Institute of Space Physics Uppsala, 03/02/2016, Uppsala, Sweden.
• Invited Public Engagement Talks:
• Science Week 2023, Faculty of Science and Technology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, 27/03/2023.
• Mars Week 2023, UK Space Education Office, 10/03/2023, virtual.
• Yorkshire Philosophical Society, 20/10/2022.
• British Science Festival 2022, British Science Association, 15/09/2022.
• Mars Week 2022, UK Space Education Office, 16/03/2022, virtual.

Community Leadership:

• Member of the Royal Astronomical Society's Awards Review Group (2020/2021).
• Chair of the MIST Awards Taskforce (since 2021) and Member since 2019.
• Elected member of the MIST (Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial) Community Council since August 2019 (see www.mist.ac.uk).
• Session convener at the SuperDARN workshops in 2015 and 2018, the National Astronomy Meeting in 2019, and the 14th International Conference on Substorms in 2019.
• Reviewer for Nature Astronomy (since 2020); Annales Geophysicae (since 2019); Journal of Geophysical Research - Space Physics (since 2014).

Scientific Collaboration:

• Member of the International Space Science International Team 546 on Surface Waves(2023/2024).
• Member of SuperDARN Data Standards Working Group.
• Member of SuperDARN Spacecraft Scheduling Working Group.
• Member of SuperDARN Data Analysis Working Group.
• Member of the Whole Atmospheric Modelling Extention led by Prof. D. Jackson (Met Office) (2017-2019).
• Member of the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionospheric Link Explorer (SMILE) ESA/CAS mission consortium and member of Ground-based support mission team.
• External examiner for the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), University of Southampton (UK) and University of Bergen (Norway).

Public Engagement:

• Co-Lead of Campus in the City project: A Journey Through the Solar System - Public Engagement activity for the entire family (~180 visitors), 12/04/2023, Lancaster, UK.
• Winner of the British Science Association Lecture Prize in Mathematics and Physics, 2022.
• Virtual Talk: How the Aurora Lights up Space, 16/03/2022, Mars Week, UK Space Education Office.
• Presenting Journey across the Solar System, Light Up Lancaster, 2017.
• Outreach talk, explaining research to the public, Pub-hD talk, Leicester, UK: 2015.
• Setting up & talking to visitors at the Stargazing Live Event, Leicester, UK:
• 2015: ionospheric & magnetospheric phenomena; 2014: Space Weather; 2013: Supernovae, Gamma Ray Bursts & SWIFT.
• Outreach talk, explaining research to the public, Pub-hD talk, Leicester, UK: 2015.
• 3 Minute Presentation to a non-specialist audience explaining my research, 3 Minute Wonder Competition, organised by the Institute of Physics: 2014 & 2015.

Teaching:

• 2023/2024:

  Supervision of 3rd year undergraduate literature review project on "The importance of climate influences in determining the past, present and future climate conditions." (PHYS354 at Lancaster University).

• 2021/2022:

  Co-supervisor of two Masters student projects in Statistics (with Dr A. Gibberd at Lancaster University).

• 2017-2024:

  PhD student supervision with A. Grocott (Lancaster University).

• 2013-2017:

  Undergraduate Laboratory supervision and marking of lab notebooks; Small group teaching (University of Leicester).

Media:

Written:

• Commentary for Business Insider (13th May 2024).
• Commentary for The Telegraph (11th May 2024).
• Commentary for The Telegraph (24th April 2023).
• Article for BBC Sky at Night Magazine: Dancing Lights from Space: Investigating the Aurora (2023), BBC Sky at Night Magazine, published by Immediate Media, print: March 2023 issue (online version).
• Commentary for Washington Post (December 2022).
• Commentary for Physics World (March 2021).
• Blogpost for AuroraWatch UK (February 2018).

Radio and Podcast:

• I was interviewed and contributed to Lancaster Museum's 100 years 100 objects podcast series with Episode 38 about Captain Greenwood's transit device.
• I was interviewed for the Evening Standard's Leaders Podcast (24th April 2023).
• I was interviewed for the Royal Astronomical Society's Supermassive podcast (Episode 19, 30th July 2021).
• I have previously appeared on BBC Radio Leicestershire (January 2013) and on the BBC Radio 4 show The Third Degree.

Programming Knowledge:

• All code used for analysis work and to generate figures for publications, talks/posters is written in Python and IDL.
• The SuperDARN software packages (Radar Software Toolkit), which I have contributed to, is mainly written in C.
• I made this website using Jekyll and Markdown.
• I also know some Fortran and R.