ABOUT ME
I'm a space physicist who studies energetic particles throughout the solar system, from the stream interaction regions and shocks driven by coronal mass ejections that accelerate them in the solar wind to the space environments of Venus, Earth, Saturn, and Uranus. I lead the Solar & Heliosphere Group at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio.
Photo: SwRI
I grew up in Austin, Texas, and moved to Arlington for my physics degree at the University of Texas at Arlington. There I became very active in our Society of Physics Students chapter, which sparked a lasting interest in outreach and service, and working as an undergraduate space physics researcher gave me a passion for research.
After my Bachelor's degree, I moved to New Hampshire to work as a graduate research assistant at the University of New Hampshire. After two years enjoying the White Mountains and exploring the coast of Maine, I returned to Texas to finish my Ph.D. at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) with SwRI. There I worked hands on with space flight calibration, mostly on Solar Orbiter's Heavy Ion Sensor and recalibration of the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument on New Horizons, and I got to show the beauties of the Texas Hill Country to my now wife, Sarah. I was also elected student representative for the Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) workshop, led our department graduate student writing group, and served as an officer in our Graduate Society of Physics Students.
After finishing my Ph.D. in May 2017, I joined the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) as a postdoctoral fellow, living in Baltimore, and moved into a Senior Professional Staff position in 2019. At APL I studied energetic ions in the magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, and stream interaction regions and coronal mass ejections with Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, and other spacecraft. I worked on instrument teams for Parker Solar Probe, Cassini, New Horizons, and other missions, served on the Parker Solar Probe Project Science Team, became Instrument Scientist for Solar Orbiter's Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph, and led NASA's InterMeso mission-concept study to investigate the unexplored mesoscale structure and variability of the solar wind.
In 2024, Sarah and I moved back to Texas to take Lead Scientist positions at SwRI, and in 2026 I became leader of the Solar & Heliosphere Group. In 2025 my co-authors and I were the first to show that a stream interaction region passing Uranus during the 1986 Voyager 2 flyby was the likely cause of the planet's surprisingly intense electron radiation belt. I advised Malik Walker's Ph.D. research on how particle acceleration at shocks driven by coronal mass ejections changes as the shocks travel outward; he is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory. I now advise Ph.D. student Sophia Davis at UTSA on energetic particle transport in the inner heliosphere associated with the heliospheric current sheet. I also chaired the Early Career Leadership Advisory Committee of the American Geophysical Union's Space Physics and Aeronomy section in 2025 and serve on the section's Executive Committee.
Beyond Research
Austin's unofficial slogan is Keep Austin Weird, and I have always been fond of the path less taken. A childhood wanderlust grew into a love of travel and of exploring wherever I live, especially the local eateries and culture, and I photograph a lot of it. Some of those photos are on my Photography page. These days, a lot of that exploring is done alongside my daughter.
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