Our People

Prof. Dale Gary is Distinguished Professor in Physics at NJIT, and Director of Solar Observatories. That includes the Big Bear Solar Observatory, an optical observatory in California with the highest-resolution solar telescope in the world, and also the Owens Valley Solar Array, a unique radio facility also in California dedicated to observing the Sun. Together, these two observatories are used to study the outer layers of the Sun from the surface outward. We especially study the way magnetic fields on the Sun affect solar activity such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other events making up "Space Weather."  We also study how radio bursts from the Sun affect radio and cell-phone communications.  Prof. Gary teaches astronomy and physics courses at NJIT, as well as writing papers on his research to share with other scientists.

Prof. Gary received a B.S. in Physics in 1976 from University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Astro-Geophysics from U. Colorado, Boulder. He then spent 15 years at Caltech before coming to NJIT in 1997.

Dr. Owen Giersch is the Chief Observer for the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array. He obtained his PhD in Physics from Curtin University, Western Australia in 2017. While completing his PhD, he worked for Australian Bureau of Meteorology at Learmonth Solar Observatory near Exmouth, Western Australia.

Owen's main interests is in solar feature analysis and long term variation in solar indices. He also volunteers as a Space Science Researcher for the Australian Space Academy. He joined the EOVSA project in March 2020.

Dr. Bin Chen is Associate Professor of Physics affiliated with the Department of Physics and the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. He moved to New Jersey Institute of Technology from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 2016, where he held an appointment as Astrophysicist in the Solar and Stellar X-ray Group. Before that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the CSTR of NJIT. He obtained a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Virginia in 2013. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2017 and the NASA Living-with-the-Star Jack Eddy Fellowship in 2013.

Chen's main expertise is in solar radio astronomy. He is particularly interested in explosive events on the Sun known as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which have the potential of affecting the space environment around the Earth. He utilizes some of the world's largest radio observatories for solar observing, including the Karl G. Janksy Very Large Array (VLA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). He is a core member of NJIT's own solar-dedicated radio telescope: the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array. He is also experienced in using NASA's space-based solar observatories including RHESSI, SDO, Hinode, IRIS, and STEREO.

Dr. Gregory Fleishman is Distinguished Research Professor affiliated with the Department of Physics and the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research.

Research interests:

Solar/Stellar/Space Physics: coronal and chromospheric magnetography, active regions, solar and stellar flares, energy release, particle acceleration and transport, radiation mechanisms, data driven 3D models, solar science with ALMA.

Theoretical Physics/Astrophysics: plasma astrophysics, emission and transfer of electromagnetic radiation, fast codes for radiation transfer, high-energy processes, and charged particle kinetics in interstellar medium, galactic objects, jets, and gamma-ray bursts.

Publications:

Dr. Fleishman's publications on ADS

Dr. Gelu Nita is Research Professor affiliated with the Department of Physics and the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. Please refer to Dr. Nita's personal website for more information.

Dr. Sijie Yu is an Associate Research Professor affiliated with the Department of Physics and the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015 and a B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2010. He received the Pollyanna Chu Award of Chinese Academy of Sciences for Excellent Ph.D Graduates in 2015, and NASA Early Career Investigator Award (ECIP) in 2021.

Yu’s current work mainly focus on solar radio astronomy based on the observations from some of the world’s most advanced radio telescopes with solar observing capability, including the Karl G. Janksy Very Large Array (VLA) and the Atacama Large Milli-meter Array (ALMA), and the solar-dedicated radio telescope, Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA).

Dr. Surajit Modal is a Postdoctoral Research Associate affiliated with the Department of Physics and the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. He obtained a Ph.D. from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 2020 and a M.S. from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2015.

Yuqian Wei is advised by Drs. Bin Chen and Haimin Wang. He joined the Solar Radio Group in Spring 2017. His research utilizes EOVSA and BBSO/GST data.

Meiqi Wang is advised by Dr. Bin Chen. She joined the Solar Radio Group in Fall 2019. Her research utilizes EOVSA and Parker Solar Probe data.

Natsuha Kuroda, advised by Dr. Dale Gary, got her Ph.D. in Applied Physics in August 2017. She won the prestigious NASA Living-with-a-Star/UCAR Jack Eddy Fellowship in 2018. Currently she is a postdoctoral fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory. Her research focuses the observations and the modeling of hard X-ray and microwave emissions of solar flares to analyze the properties of flare-accelerated electrons. She works on the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array project, and also uses data from other observatories such as Nobeyama Radio Observatory, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and the Solar Dynamic Observatory.

Shaheda Shaik was advised by Dr. Dale Gary. She received a Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from New Jersey Institute of Technology in Aug 2021. Her PhD thesis research concentrated on the source characteristics of the microwave emission during solar flares. She mainly uses and works with the radio data observed from Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA), along with Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA).

Yi Chai is advised by Dr. Dale Gary. He obtained a B.S. from Peking University in 2011 and entered the NJIT Applied Physics PhD program in 2013. His research focuses on solar radio astronomy. He currently studies solar chromospheric phenomena using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) combined with data from the Solar Dynamic Observatory and the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. He is familiar with using SolarSoft IDL and CASA for analyzing solar data.

Sherry Chhabra, advised by Dr. Dale Gary, obtained her Bachelors and Masters of Science from University of Pune, India and joined the NJIT Applied Physics PhD program in 2015. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in May 2021. Her interests lie in Radio and EUV Solar Astrophysics. Currently she is working on imaging spectropscopy of CME-associated radio Bursts observed by the Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array (OVRO-LWA), while also using data from LASCO-SOHO, SWAP, and SDO.

Yingjie Luo is advised by Dr. Bin Chen. He obtained a B.S. from University of Science and Technology of China. He joined in the NJIT Applied Physics PhD program in Fall 2016. He is now mainly working on the radio data from Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA).

Brian O'Donnell is advised by Dr. Dale Gary. He joined the Center for Solar Terrestrial Research as an undergraduate in 2017 and graduated with a B.S. in Applied Physics from NJIT in 2018. Brian has stayed on to do his graduate level work with CSTR mostly working with Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA). He is currently doing a deep dive on the C class solar flare that occurred on August 18, 2017.

Stasia Kuske is advised by Drs. Bin Chen and Gelu Nita. She majored in Astrophysics for her undergraduate degree from Franklin & Marshall College where she worked with NANOGrav on data processing and with NATO on Automatic Detection of Subsurface Objects of the UGO-1st Robotic Platform. She also has worked on the Green Bank Telescope where she designed a program to mitigate continuum RFI. She joined the Solar Radio Group in Fall 2021.

Ivan Oparin is advised by Drs. Bin Chen and Gregory Fleishman. He obtained his M.S. and B.S. in Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. During his bachelor's, he worked with RHESSI data and recovered the parameters of electrons in hard X-ray and gamma-ray sources in large solar flare events. During his master's, he worked with particle-in-cell simulations of collisionless shocks in various astrophysical plasma environments. He joined the Solar Radio Group in Fall 2021.

Vito LaVilla is currently pursuing his B.S. in Applied Physics at NJIT. He started as a research assistant at the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research in Fall 2019 under the guidance of Dr. Dale Gary. Vito previously worked in the software development industry and is applying his knowledge in that domain toward analyzing data from Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA) while continuing to develop his understanding of the physics behind solar phenomena.