Prize Recipient

Christopher Chen
Queen Mary University of London

"For the theoretical development of the field-particle correlation technique and its application to spacecraft measurements directly showing that electron Landau damping plays a role in the dissipation of space plasma turbulence."

Christopher Chen is a Reader in Space Plasma Physics at Queen Mary University of London and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. In 2007 he gained his MSci in Physics and in 2011 his PhD in Space Physics, both from Imperial College London. He has also worked at the University of California, Berkeley and Imperial College London, and has been a Junior Research Fellow and an STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow. His research interests include the use of in situ spacecraft measurements to study basic plasma phenomena, such as turbulence, instabilities, wave-particle interactions, and other kinetic plasma processes, and the role that they play in shaping the space plasma environment, for example, the heating and acceleration of the solar wind. In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Fowler Award and in 2021 the American Geophysical Union James B. Macelwane Medal. He is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, the American Geophysical Union, and is a member of the AGU College of Fellows. From 2016-19 he served on the executive committee for the APS Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics.

2022 Selection Committee Members: William Heidbrink (Chair), Vladimir Tikhonchuk (Vice Chair), Andrea Ciardi, Tammy Ma, Kristel Crombe, Troy Carter