Prize Recipient


Gregory Howes
University of Iowa

Citation:

"For the theoretical development of the field-particle correlation technique and its application to spacecraft measurements directly showing that electron Landau damping plays a role in the dissipation of space plasma turbulence."

Background:

Gregory G. Howes is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa. He received a B.S. from the California Institute of Technology and a B.A. from Occidental College in 1994, followed by a Diploma in Applied Science in Geophysics from Victoria University of Wellington in 1995, and finally his M.S. and Ph.D. from UCLA in 1998 and 2004, respectively. He trained as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy at UC Berkeley from 2004 through 2008 before moving to Iowa. His primary interest is to illuminate the kinetic physics of plasma heating and particle acceleration in space and astrophysical plasmas, in particular focusing on a detailed understanding of the fundamental processes of kinetic plasma turbulence, collisionless shocks, collisionless magnetic reconnection, and kinetic instabilities. His approaches span the range from massively parallel kinetic simulations and analytical theory to laboratory experiments and analysis of in situ spacecraft observations. His long-term aim is to use investigations of the energization of particles in the six-dimensional phase space of kinetic plasmas to create predictive models of energy transport, plasma heating, and particle acceleration in space and astrophysical environments, such as Earth's aurora, the solar corona and solar wind, black hole accretion disks, and the intracluster medium. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE) in 2010, an NSF CAREER Award in 2011, and the Ronald C. Davidson Award for Plasma Physics in 2016.


Selection Committee:

2022 Selection Committee Members: William Heidbrink (Chair), Vladimir Tikhonchuk (Vice Chair), Andrea Ciardi, Tammy Ma, Kristel Crombe, Troy Carter