Hello,

Most of the time, I don't do experiments in a laboratory like you would do in a high school biology or chemistry class. Instead, I use a computer to analyze data from experiments that are orbiting around the Earth, making measurements of plasma waves and electrons in the Earth's magnetosphere. We have so much data to analyze, that it can get to be a bit tedious at times, but it can also be a lot of fun. When I was a graduate student, I had the opportunity to travel to the Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks, Alaska where we could look at the satellite data in real-time, as the Fast Auroral Snapshot (FAST) satellite passed through the beautiful aurora we could see in the sky overhead. Alaska winters are very cold, but it is also a lot of fun to work at Poker Flat.

When I'm not analyzing satellite data, I help test and calibrate the instruments that we place on board sounding rockets and satellites that will be launched into space. A few years ago, I tested electron detectors for a sounding rocket that was launched in Alaska. Assembling the detectors was a bit tricky, but turning the knobs and the big wheel to open and close the valves on the vacuum chamber was fun. I also got to travel to NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to help with the integration of the instruments onto the sounding rocket payload, which was quite exciting. You can read more about the rocket and see some pictures here -

http://www.solarweek.org/...st_blog/default.aspx

Right now, I am running simulations of an instrument that will be flown on a future NASA mission called MMS-SMART, which stands for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission - Solving Magnetospheric Acceleration, Reconnection, and Turbulence (try saying that one 5 times, fast!). I think it is really cool that I contributed to something that will be flown in outer space someday.