CLASP Welcomes New Faculty and Staff
Our department is excited to welcome these new faculty and staff for the upcoming academic year.
The U-M Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering is excited to welcome new faculty and staff to our team for the upcoming academic year.
Welcome to our new faculty and staff!
New Faculty, Tenure and Tenure Track:
Associate Professor Jim Raines
Associate Professor Jim Raines is a space plasma physicist interested in the solar wind and planetary magnetospheres, including that of the Earth. Dr. Raines works closely with and participates on the operating teams for several Michigan-led plasma ion composition spectrometers on NASA’s MESSENGER, ACE and Wind spacecraft. He helped develop the the first comprehensive plasma composition dataset at L1 from the ACE/SWICS instrument. It is still well-used today and available at the ACE Science Center. One of his main interests in science is studying Mercury’s magnetosphere, mostly using data from the Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS), which was built at Michigan (1998-2003) and orbited Mercury on MESSENGER 2011-2015. He also works closely with a new plasma composition instrument, the Heavy Ion Sensor, part of the Solar Wind Analyzers (SWA) suite on ESA’s Solar Orbiter, which launched on February 9, 2020.
Assistant Professor Dan Welling
Assistant Professor Dan Welling recently taught at The University of Texas at Arlington. He is returning to Michigan, where he earned his PhD in Atmospheric and Space Science from the University of Michigan in 2009. Dr. Welling has an established career in magnetospheric physics and numerical model development. He works at the Director of the Community for the Unified Study of Interhemispheric Asymmetries. He was a core member of the team that transitioned the SWMF to operations and continues to lead several funded research projects. He is currently Co-PI of an 11-person, 5-partner institution NSF PREEVENTS team where he exercises the management and organizational skills required for CUSIA. He has led several science teams to produce timely deliverables, most recently for NASA CCMC’s International Forum on Space Weather Assessment.
New research faculty:
- Ryan Dewey, Assistant Research Scientist
- Omar Leon, Assistant Research Scientist
- Yining Shi, Assistant Research Scientist
- Judit Szente, Assistant Research Scientist
New staff:
- Jiazheng Li, Research Fellow
- Irena Gershkovich, Research Fellow
- Johannes Stauffer, Systems Administrator
- Beverly Dela Cruz, IT Support Desk Associate