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Michael Shay

Title: Office: Phone: email: Web:

Assistant Professor 266 Sharp Lab (302) 831-2677 shay@udel.edu www.physics.udel.edu/~shay

Fields of Research

Michael Shay studies plasma physics using analytical theory and massively parallel computer simulations. His work is applicable to a diverse set of phenomena: solar flares and coronal mass ejections on the sun, the Earth's magnetosphere and space weather, star formation in astrophysical molecular clouds and accretion disks, and controlled fusion devices such as the tokamak. His research focuses on multiscale phenomena in which short scales (length and time) are intrinsically linked to long scales, making them extremely difficult to simulate using conventional brute force methods. He has extensively studied one multiscale process called magnetic reconnection, in which large amounts of magnetic energy is explosively released in the form energetic particle acceleration, heating, and plasma flows. He is also studying novel simulation techniques which may provide a means to directly simulate multiscale phenomena.

He currently is actively participating in the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling, which is working towards creating a physics based whole sun-Earth model in order to predict space weather. He is also actively involved in the Center for Multiscale Plasma Dynamics, which seeks to develop numerical techniques for and understand such multiscale problems as plasma turbulence and magnetic reconnection. He also is currently receiving funding from NASA to study reconnection in the Earth's magnetosphere using numerical simulations and data from the CLUSTER spacecraft, a 4 satellite mission currently orbiting the Earth.

Michael Shay received his undergraduate degree from Grinnell College in 1992 and his PhD from University of Maryland, College Park, in 1998. He joined the University of Delaware as an assistant professor in 2005.