Iver Cairns is a senior research fellow in the School of Physics, with 13 years experience as a research physicist since his Ph.D. was awarded. Eleven of these 12 years were spent in the USA at the University of Iowa, home institution of Professor James Van Allen and arguably one of the places where the field of space physics started. Iver's research in the USA was mostly supported by grants from NASA. He is an expert in space physics, particularly in the study of plasma wave and radio emissions associated with accelerated particle distributions with excess free energy. He performs both theoretical and observational analyses, emphasizing the comparison of theoretical predictions with in situ observational data from spacecraft. Iver has worked on phenomena in the solar corona, the interplanetary medium, Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere, and the outer heliosphere.
Iver has considerable teaching experience. This includes last year's teaching of this course, first year astronomy courses for astronomy majors (2 courses part-time) and non-majors (1 course full time, 2 courses part-time) and a fluid mechanics course to Ph.D. students (2 semesters part time).
Mike Wheatland is a research fellow in the School of Physics, with 5 years experience as a professional physicist since theaward of his PhD. His postdoctoral fellowship was spent at Stanford University in the USA, where he worked on solar physics with Professor Peter Sturrock and other solar experts. He performs both theoretical and observational analyses of solar phenomena, including solar flares and models for magnetic fields in the corona and solar wind.
Andrew Willes is a research fellow in the School of Physics. He obtained his Ph.D. 3 years ago and has worked subsequently as a professional physicist in the UK and in Australia. Andrew's research is primarily on the generation of plasma waves and radio emissions in the solar corona and solar wind. He is primarily a theorist but enjoys comparing observational data with theory.