We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Michael Hesse has joined the Birkeland Centre for Space Science (BCSS) and the Department of Physics and Technology as a professor in space physics from January 1 this year.
Michael Hesse obtained his PhD from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany in 1988 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA from 1988-1991. From 1991 to 1993, he was a principal scientist at Hughes System Corporation in Maryland, USA, and in 1993, he became a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA.
In 1999, he became Director of the NASA Community Coordinated Modeling Center and was responsible for establishing this unit. Since 2012, Michael has been the Director of the NASA Heliophysics Science Division.
Michael has extensive experience as a principal investigator on numerous NASA and NSF grants. He has a great deal of scientific management and public outreach experience.
In addition, he has an impressive publication record with more than 250 papers – of which he is the first author on 74 – in international peer-review journals. His h-index is 50.
Michael’s merits are especially strong when it comes to analytic theory and modeling of space plasmas, MHD modeling of magnetospheric dynamics, field-aligned current generation, magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, reconnection current sheet structure, code development, and the utilization of models for experiment. He is a scientist of international stature in MHD modeling and the modeling tools he has developed are widely used by the international scientific community.
He is currently the lead Co-Investigator for the modeling effort on «Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission». This is an ongoing NASAs multisatellite flagship mission to study the microphysics of magnetic reconnection.
Professor Michael Hesse will be an important asset for both the Birkeland Centre for Space Science and the Department of Physics and Technology. We extend him a warm welcome and look forward to working with him.
