LASP Science Seminars

LASP seminars are generally held every Thursday at 1:00 PM on Zoom and in person.
If you are interested in attending, please contact one of our Science Seminar Committee members (see below) to be added to the mailing list.

We are currently seeking speakers for our Spring 2025 seminar series. If you or a colleague would like to give a seminar, please contact one of our Science Seminar Committee members:

Sonal Jain (Planetary)
Yi Qi (Space Physics)
David Wilson (Solar/Stellar)
Chihoko Cullens (Earth Atmospheres)

Upcoming Science Seminars

February 13, 2025

Observations of The Interplay Between Waves, Magnetic Reconnection and Turbulence in Space Plasmas

Victoria (Tori) Wilder

(University of Texas at Arlington)

Most of the observable matter in the universe is plasma, and therefore understanding its behavior is important for a variety of space, astrophysical and laboratory applications. An active topic of research in recent years has been...

Past Science Seminars

February 6, 2025

Satellite Remote Sensing of Clouds in Three Dimensions

Hong Chen

(LASP)

Clouds have long represented a significant source of uncertainty in the estimation of the Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) from space- or airborne imagery observations. In passive cloud remote sensing, three-dimensional (3D) cloud structures observed in nature...

January 30, 2025

NASA Funding, Politics, and the U.S. Federal Budget Process

Johannes Loschnigg

(GHGSat)

Ever wondered how the US Federal budget gets developed, and how this impacts NASA funding? How certain programs or missions get cut and then later come back to life? What you can do when your particular...

January 23, 2025

Experimentally replicating hypervelocity ice grain sampling during a planetary flyby using laboratory impact ionization mass spectrometry

Marshall Seaton

(JPL, NASA )

Impact ionization mass spectrometers, historically referred to as dust analyzers, have played a crucial role in planetary science mission investigations in recent decades, and will continue to do so for decades to come. Perhaps most notably,...

January 16, 2025

Earth-Based Transmitters Trigger Precipitation of Inner Radiation Belt Electrons: Unveiling Observations and Modeling Results

Zheng Xiang

(LASP)

Human activity influences Earth’s environment, including the space environment hundreds to thousands of kilometers above the Earth. One direct evidence is that the 19.8 kHz electromagnetic signals launched by the North West Cape (NWC) transmitter station...

December 5, 2024

The Role of the Polar Vortex in Sun-Earth Coupling

Lynn Harvey

(LASP)

In the polar regions, the wintertime polar vortices play a critical role in both “bottom-up” atmospheric coupling via its modulation of planetary and gravity waves as well as “top-down” coupling via the transport of nitrogen oxides...