Raluca Ilie
Assistant Professor
Prof. Ilie is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her primary research is the development and application of high-performance, first principle computational models to describe and predict the conditions in near-Earth space leading to geomagnetic storms.
Prof. Ilie’s focus is on developing new approaches to study the dynamics of plasmas and electromagnetic fields in the geospace environment and to advance the predictive capabilities of the complex dynamics occurring in the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere system. She combines both theoretical and observational work to develop predictive tools that form the basis of operational warning systems and hazard mitigation.
Prof. Ilie earned her Ph.D. in Space and Planetary Physics from the University of Michigan and has been an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working on TWINS NASA space mission data. As part of the Center for the Space Environment Modeling at the University of Michigan, she was a core member of the software developing team for the Space Weather Modeling Framework. She is a recent awardee of the Air Force Young Investigator Program.
Muhammad Fraz Bashir
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr. Bashir is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His primary research area is to understand the Sun-Earth system based on the plasma physics which includes the study of plasma waves and instabilities for their possible role in predicting/modeling the space weather, quantifying the particle acceleration and plasma transport and explanation of the coronal heating problem.
He is currently focusing to quantify the effects of the inductive electric field in the terrestrial magnetosphere using the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) and also the effect of heavy ions on plasma waves and instabilities and their role in modeling the different magnetospheric processes.
Dr. Bashir has completed his Ph. D. in Plasma Physics from Government College University Lahore, Pakistan with Prof. G. Murtaza (one of last five students of Physics Noble laureate Prof. Abdus Salam). During his Ph. D., he was awarded Canadian commonwealth Exchange Ph. D. Scholarship and worked with Prof. Andrei Smolyakov at University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
He has been selected as Junior Associate for Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ASICTP) Trieste, Italy for the period of six years (2018-23) and was the recipient of Lloyd V. Berkner Travel Fellowship (2012) by American Geophysical Union. He has served as Secretary (2017) and Joint Secretary (2016) of Pakistan Physical Society (PPS) and successfully initiated collaboration between Forum of International Physics of American Physical Society (APS) and PPS for public outreach in Pakistan and in particular to the province of Punjab. He also has several national recognitions like Higher Education Commission (HEC) Approved Supervisor (2016), 135th in physics ranking of “Productive Scientists of Pakistan-2016 ” and COMSATS Research Productivity Award (2014-2016) etc.
He enjoys playing soccer and since his childhood to higher education, he was involved in representing college and university teams to various National level tournaments and also club teams with private leagues in Pakistan.
Jianghuai Liu
Graduate Research Assistant
Jianghuai Liu is a graduate student in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on quantifying electromagnetic and kinetic effects on ring current particles, and the resulting intensification of ring current, via the development of the HEIDI ring current model and its subsequent coupling with other models within the Space Weather Modeling Framework.
Jianghuai received his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois in 2017. He is most interested in applying electromagnetic theory in modeling the near-terrestrial plasma environment, as well as in the transport processes of charged particles under electromagnetic fields.
Mei-Yun Lin
Graduate Research Assistant
Meiyun Lin is a graduate student pursuing PhD degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focus is the circulation of heavy ions in the ionosphere-magnetosphere system through the development of HEIDI and PWOM models.
Meiyun earned her bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2017. In her college life, she worked on projects related to embedded system and was a software engineer in a start-up.
Yu Huang
Graduate Research Assistant
Yu Huang is a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research is focused on the study of neutral dynamics in the evolution of the magnetosphere.
Yu completed his Computer Engineering Major and Astronomy Minor in U of I and his interest is in space physics and high performance computing with intern experience in Amazon Web Services.