Florida Tech Professor Earns NASA Grant for Space Sciences

– Florida Tech Professor Ramon Lopez has earned a grant of more than $95,000 from NASA to continue his work on simulations of the interaction of the solar
wind and Earth’s magnetic field. He and collaborating scientists compare these computer simulations with observations to gain insight into the behavior of
space weather.

“We continue to focus on comparisons between spacecraft observations and ground-based observations, and the results of computer simulations of space
weather. We are especially interested in understanding how solar wind energy gets into the magnetosphere to drive processes like heating of the upper
atmosphere and the aurora,” said Lopez.

Lopez joined the Florida Tech faculty in fall 2004. He most recently was the C. Sharp Cook Distinguished Professor in the University of Texas at El Paso
(UTEP) Department of Physics. He is also the co-director for education for the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling, a science and technology
center funded by the National Science Foundation. He is collaborating on this project with researchers from UTEP and other institutions.