Illinois ECE graduate student wins Outstanding Student Presentation Award at AGU 2019

Illinois ECE graduate student Mei-Yun Lin recently won the Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA) at the 2019 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting. Given by the AGU during its annual fall meeting, which is the largest international Earth and Space Science meeting, this prestigious award celebrates the top 3-5% of student presentations.

This meeting is attended annually by more than 28,000 scientists from over 100 countries. From December 7th to 11th in San Francisco, students attending this meeting had their presentations judged by anonymous referees who are scientists from the community.

Lin's work involves the development of a new physics-based model of the polar wind which is a stream of plasma flowing out from the high latitude atmosphere into space, along the Earth's magnetic field lines. Her research aims to improve our current understanding of the motion of nitrogen and oxygen ions in relation to Earth's gravitational pull by creating more accurate computational models.

"Mei-Yun’s work is highly impactful," said Illinois ECE Assistant Professor and Lin's advisor Raluca Ilie. " When it comes to research, Mei-Yun is thorough, meticulous and persistent, she pays particular attention to even the smallest of details, which allowed her to gain a deep and comprehensive understanding of the problem at hand."

Lin's work has the potential to lead to an improved capability for understanding and predicting space weather. With society becoming more dependent on space-based technologies, it is crucial to continue improving our ability to understand and predict space weather.

"In preparation for the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, we worked on elucidating the conclusions of her work, and on presenting the material clearly and concisely, which is an important criterion for outstanding presentations," said Illie. "Her persistence and effort prepared her to answer questions during the presentation, which is another important factor in getting high marks from judges and winning the award."

Lin's work is funded through a grant award from the AFOSR Young Investigator Program "Determining the Contribution of Nitrogen to the Total Ionospheric Ion Outflow."