For more information the students I'm advising and mentoring, as well as my "academic genealogy," see more about:
| The Cranmer Group |
Current Projects and Teams
- I'm a Co-Investigator on a NASA Small Explorer mission: PUNCH (Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere), whose PI is Craig DeForest at SwRI, and is expected to launch in 2023. I'm also the lead of PUNCH Working Group 1C, whose goal is to observe the elusive "Alfven surface" in the outer corona. Stay tuned for more information about this exciting mission.
- I'm a founding member of the Space Weather Technology, Research, and Education Center (SWx TREC), a CU Grand Challenge program whose Director is Dr. Thomas Berger.
- I'm a Co-Investigator on two instruments (SWEAP and FIELDS) that are flying on NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft. PSP flies closer to the surface of the Sun than any other previous spacecraft, and it has begun to revolutionize our understanding of how the Sun produces its hot (million-degree) corona and its super-fast solar wind.
- From 2013 to 2018, I served on the Science Working Group (SWG) of the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), which is a next-generation, 4-meter diameter solar telescope under construction in Hawaii. DKIST a project of the National Solar Observatory (NSO), whose headquarters has recently moved to Boulder. Despite having rotated off the SWG, I'm still involved with several projects connected to the initial phases of DKIST operations.
I'm a member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), its Historical Astronomy Division (HAD), and its Solar Physics Division (SPD). I'm currently serving as a member of the SPD Nominating Committee. I'm also a member of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and from 2006 to 2009 I served as an Associate Editor for the AGU Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.
Background
From 1996 to 2014, I was a staff astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), working in the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division. I was also an Associate Senior Member of the CfA's of the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC), and from 2011 to 2014 I served as a Harvard University Lecturer on Astronomy.
During my time at the CfA, I worked extensively with John Kohl's Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) group, which operated an instrument on the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft from 1996 to 2013. UVCS observed ultraviolet spectral lines emitted in the extended solar corona, which have allowed us to obtain a better understanding of how the solar wind is heated and accelerated.
In 1996 I received my Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Delaware, where I was a part of the Bartol Research Institute since 1992. My Ph.D. thesis advisor was Dr. Stanley P. Owocki, and my Ph.D. Dissertation is online in PDF and postscript formats. I received my B.S. in Physics from Drexel University in 1990, and my M.S. in Astronomy from the Ohio State University in 1991 (M.S. thesis advisor: Dr. George Collins). While at Drexel, I did co-op work at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. Yes, I'm from New Jersey.