Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering
Space Weather Impacts, Forecasting and Transit Lab (SWIFT)
Led by Alicia Petersen · Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
What we study
SWIFT studies space weather, the bursts of particles and magnetic energy from the Sun that can disrupt satellites, GPS, communications and power grids. The lab models the Sun's magnetic field, builds monitoring instruments and analyzes spacecraft data.
What working here is like
- Computational
- Building & testing
- Coding required
- Projects
- 2
- Papers
- 2
Current projects
Solar energetic particle transit
Studies how magnetic structures in space affect the travel of solar energetic particles, fast particles released by the Sun that can disrupt satellites.
ICME characteristics from ACE data
Uses spacecraft measurements from NASA's ACE satellite to describe the characteristics of interplanetary coronal mass ejections, large solar storms traveling past Earth.
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Characterizing Magnetic Connectivity of Solar Flare Electron Sources to STEREO Spacecraft Using ADAPT-WSA Modeling
2021 · The Astrophysical Journal
Compares electron event data from STEREO spacecraft using ADAPT-WSA modeling.
- RMSE is not enough: Guidelines to robust data-model comparisons for magnetospheric physics
2021 · Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
Suggests using multiple metrics to compare magnetospheric models with data.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
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