Welcome

Toshi Nishimura's group studies Earth's auroral physics including solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, plasma and electromagnetic energy transport, wave-particle interaction for diffuse aurora, and coupling to the thermosphere. We primarily take integrated observational approach to understand the system response to solar wind energy input into the magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere. The dataset includes all-sky imagers, incoherent and coherent scatter radars, ionospheric and magnetospheric satellites, and ground magnetometers.

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About Toshi

Toshi Nishimura graduated the Department of Geophysics, Tohoku University, Japan in 2009. He was a JSPS Research Fellow at the Nagoya University, Japan until 2011, and he came to UCLA initially as a visiting scholar and now he is an assistant researcher. He received Student Paper Awards at 2006 AGU Fall Meeting and 2007 SGEPSS Fall Meeting. He also received an Obayashi Young Scientist Award in 2014. His primary research interest is auroral physics particularly on auroral substorms and pulsating aurora from the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling perspective to identify electromagnetic energy transfer processes in the Earth's magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling system, a fundamental topic for understanding plasma transport and energization, using observations in space and on the ground. He identified the sequence of events leading to substorm auroral onset, which had been a long-standing debate over 40 years in the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling community and became a potential resolution to a long-standing debate in the substorm community. This work was selected as a NASA Press Release.

He has also investigated the cause of a certain type of aurora, called pulsating aurora. Although different wave modes had been discussed in the community, he uniquely determined by using a cross correlation method that the lower band chorus waves are the mode of waves for driving pulsating aurora. This discovery has been published in the journal Science and highlighted by news media. His research has been supported by 12 grants from NASA, NSF and JSPS, and his research led to more than 140 refereed papers. His research vision is to pursue coupling processes across different regimes in the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-Thermosphere system, including coupling among the dayside-plasma sheet-inner magnetosphere using new high-resolution imaging in the polar region, and coupling to the upper neutral atmosphere by combining satellite observations and numerical simulations.

He currently supervises a graduate student and two postdoctoral scholars. They study auroral physics in the dayside ionosphere, polar cap, and nightside auroral and subauroral regions for understanding the structure and evolution of fast transient plasma flows and their influence on magnetospheric structures. Bea Gallardo-Lacourt received a First Place Prize at the 2014 CEDAR workshop for having the best student paper, and an Outstanding Student Paper Award at 2014 AGU Fall Meeting. Ying Zou received Jacob A. Bjerknes Award from UCLA for academic excellence and UCAR Jack Eddy Fellowship. He has also worked with two undergraduate students and a high-school student.