Qianli Ma

Dr Ma is currently an assistant researcher at Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences in University of California, Los Angeles, and a visiting researcher at Center for Space Physics in Boston University. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 2010, and PhD degree in space physics at UCLA in 2015. After graduating, he worked with Professor Richard Thorne and Wen Li as a postdoc in UCLA and came to visit BU from November 2016. His research interest includes the Earth’s radiation belt dynamics, plasma wave properties in the magnetosphere, and analyzing Juno waves and particle data to study Jovian aurora and radiation belts.

Research Interests: Resonant wave-particle interaction in Earth and Jupiter’s magnetosphere – simulating the transport, acceleration and decay of relativistic electrons in the radiation belts – global distributions, properties and scattering effects of whistler mode plasma waves in the magnetosphere

Current works:

• Simulation the evolution of radiation belt electrons using the Van Allen Probes measurements
• Simulate the peculiar electron pitch angle distributions observed by Juno
• Study the resonant interaction between ions and electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves in Earth’s inner magnetosphere