Professor of Astronomy Merav Opher has been elected as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), an international scientific association that seeks to promote discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity.
The Fellows program recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space science through a breakthrough, discovery, or innovation in their field. Fellows act as external experts, capable of advising government agencies and other organizations outside the sciences upon request.
Opher’s research focues on how plasma and magnetic effects reveal themselves in astrophysical and space physics environments. She studies how stars interact with their surrounding, how the solar system interacts with the local interstellar medium, and the interaction of extra-solar planets with their host stars. In particular, she is interested in understanding how the location of the Sun in the interstellar medium affects the heliosphere—a barrier that protects planets from interstellar radiation—and what that means for life on Earth.
A faculty member in BU’s Center for Space Physics, Opher is also the principal investigator of the SHIELD DRIVE Science Center, a NASA-funded center with more than 40 leading scientists across a dozen institutions. She is also the only female investigator on NASA’s Voyager spacecraft mission and co-investigator of the New Horizon Mission.
“My research has always pushed the envelope and proposed new ideas,” Opher said. “I am so honored to be recognized by my peers.”
Opher said that in order to be nominated as an AGU Fellow, scientists must give back to the scientific community, in addition to making “breakthrough” contributions in research. As a scientist who identifies as LGTBQ, she seeks to bring new, diverse voices to the scientific community, including women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and scientists from unrepresented cultural and racial backgrounds. She said the heliophysics community is, for the most part, mostly white and male; it is also aging, necessitating the need to train the next generation of space physics workers.
Opher said that the best computer codes and standard theories fail to explain current observations of the heliosphere, so there is a “real need” to bring “outside-of-the-box” ideas and a new vision to her field. Through SHIELD, she has recruited and mentored several younger researchers.
Opher was awarded the prestigious Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship as the William Bentinck-Smith Fellow from 2021 to 2022 and as the William Bentinck-Smith Fellow from 2021 to 2022. In 2008, she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the NSF Young Investigator CAREER Award.
Read more about Opher’s research in The Brink.
See previous coverage of Merav Opher, with video.
—Caitlin Reidy (COM`24)