Faculty Member Brings Prestigious NSF CAREER Award to Florida Tech

– Dr. Niescja Turner, Florida Tech assistant professor of physics and space sciences, joined the faculty this fall, bringing with her over $400,000 of
National Science Foundation grant money. The grant funds her project, titled, “Dynamics and Evolution of Magnetic Storms in Varying Solar Wind Conditions.”

Most of Turner’s research focuses on the study of the influence of particles from the Sun on the Earth and near-Earth space, such as the processes that
cause magnetic storms or aurorae. In particular, she studies the flow of energy from the Sun and its solar wind into the Earth’s magnetic field region and
ionosphere. This work will help answer questions about what types of solar disturbances can lead to the most intense magnetic storms here on Earth.

Most recently, Turner was an assistant professor in the department of physics at the University of Texas in El Paso. Prior to that she conducted
geophysical research at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, Finland. Turner earned her doctoral degree from the University of Colorado in
Boulder, where she also taught astronomy and wrote a children’s planetarium show called “Kids in Space.”

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the NSF’s most prestigious awards for new faculty members. The program recognizes and supports
the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.