Full-time UC San Diego Research Scientists and Project Scientist that conduct independent research programs while collaborating with faculty, researchers, and graduate students. Research Scientists and Project Scientists actively participate in mentoring students and perform Astronomy service.
Dr. Andrew Buffington works on solar system studies, on time series studies of more distant objects, and on development of new imaging instrumentation.
Dr. Kevin Crowley has spent his scientific career designing, building, and operating instrumentation for the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background. He would like to answer the question: Did our universe actually undergo inflation? To do this, he is working on the deployment of the first of multiple small-aperture telescopes for the Simons Observatory experiment.
Dr. David Harker specializes in planetary science, with a research focus on solar system objects such as comets and small celestial bodies.
Dr. Bernard Jackson specializes in solar astrophysics and space-based instrument programs, and is principal investigator of solar instrumenation lab at UC San Diego.
Dr. Jérôme Maire's work focuses on developing high-time resolution instrumentation to search for astrophysical transients and developing high-contrast imaging techniques to discover and characterize extrasolar planets.
Dr. Malkov works on the acceleration of cosmic rays in supernova remnants, stellar bowshocks, and binary star systems, including cosmic ray propagation from those objects. He is also working on collisionless shocks in heliospheric and laboratory plasmas and the formation of transport barriers in magnetic fusion devices and the ionosphere.
Dr. Carl Melis is a stellar astrophysicist and his studies include the birth, life, death, and re-birth of stars and their planetary systems.
Dr. Jarred Roberts is interested in high-energy physics instrumentation development for experiments like the Compton Spectrometer and Imager Explorer (COSI-X) and the General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS).
Dr. Jean-Baptiste Ruffio is interested in extrasolar planets, high contrast imaging, and advanced image processing and statistical analysis techniques.
Dr. Rick Rothschild studies X-ray and gamma ray emission from neutron stars and black holes of all sizes, in order to understand the physical processes involved in accretion onto them.
Dr. Rameswar Singh conducts research on magnetic fusion energy with particular interests in zonal flows, momentum transport, turbulence, instabilities, and shearing effects in tokamak plasmas.