Juri Toomre
Before graduating, JILA graduate student Connor Bice recently received the 2023 Richard Nelson Thomas Award. This annual award is given to the most outstanding graduate student in astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder in honor of Dr. Richard Nelson Thomas. Dr. Thomas was one of the founding members of JILA and an influential scientist in astrophysics.
Sitting 150 million kilometers away from the Earth, the Sun produces puzzling phenomena, like solar flares, that physicists are working to understand. One of these puzzles involves the Sun's tachocline, a belt of heat transition. Before leaving JILA to become a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz, Matilsky collaborated with JILA Fellow Juri Toomre and his group at JILA to study the Sun's tachocline using computer simulations.
In a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, Bice and Toomre have found a link between a red dwarf's convective cycles, or the heat cycles in a star’s atmosphere, and its magnetic fields, using fluid dynamics simulations.
The Richard Nelson Thomas Award was established by the friends and family of R.N. "Dick" Thomas to provide an annual award to the year's most outstanding graduate student in astrophysics.ÌýEach year, the JILA astrophysical faculty nominates outstanding students and vote to determine the recipient of the award.