PHaSER Faculty Liaisons coordinate research and educational activities involving faculty resources in the participating institutions. The liaisons are the first points of contact for finding qualified undergraduate and graduate students interested in conducting Heliophysics research beyond summer internships. They provide help with advertising student positions, recruiting qualified students, selecting candidates, determining budgets for student projects, guiding and directing student projects, and ensuring their consistent progress, compliance with institutional requirements, and access to a variety of educational resources.  Faculty liaisons also communicate information about common research interests between NASA Heliophysics researchers and PHaSER academic departments, coordinating and connecting to promote collaborations and new scientific opportunities.

To initiate a student project, contact PHaSER liaisons directly using the links below, or submit an online feedback form.

Code 670: Vadim Uritsky

Prof. Uritsky (CUA) is the lead faculty liaison & coordinator for the PHaSER consortium. He is the director of the Applied Space Weather Research degree program at CUA and the head of the CUA's Space Weather Center. His interests include eruptive processes in the solar corona, plasma flows and waves in the young solar wind, magnetic reconnection in planetary magnetospheres, multiscale turbulence and complexity, and advanced data analysis techniques. 

Code 671: Jie Zhang

Prof. Zhang (GMU) works on solar physics, heliospheric physics and space weather. He studies the physical mechanism that generates solar storms and the magnetic evolution of eruptive solar active regions. His research also addresses propagation and evolution of CMEs in the interplanetary space. He also puts effort into transforming these research activities into tools for predicting solar flares and Earth-impact of CMEs.

Code 672: Jan Merka

Dr. Merka (UMBC and NASA GSFC) is  the Director of Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute at the UMBC. His main research interests are the formation and properties of magnetospheric boundaries, application of data assimilation methods in space physics, and distributed data systems. He is the Principal Investigator of the Virtual Magnetospheric Observatory development at NASA/GSFC. His publications include papers on magnetospheric cusps, bow shock models, and solar wind data assimilation.

Code 673: Natalia Buzulukova

Dr. Buzulukova (UMCP at NASA GSFC) is interested in a broad range of topics, including magnetohydrodynamic modeling of the Earth’s magnetosphere, kinetic Particle-In-Cell simulations of the geomagnetic tail, bounce-averaged models of the Earth’s ring current, modeling of the Earth’s plasmas, modeling of energetic neutral atom emissions, modeling of the Earth’s radiation belts, and modeling of extreme geomagnetic storms for space weather applications. 

Code 674: Robert Weigel

Prof. Weigel (GMU) is the director of GMU's Space Weather Lab; his research interests include magnetospheric physics and geomagnetism, space weather, solar wind/magnetosphere/ionosphere modeling, and data mining applications.

Code 675: Erdal Yigit

Prof. Yigit (GMU) works on a broad range of topics from atmospheric, space and planetary sciences, in particular, global modeling of and internal wave effects in planetary atmospheres, such as, Earth and Mars. He is the developer of the first whole atmosphere gravity wave parameterization suitable for general circulation models of planetary atmospheres.