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Plasma physics review coauthored by Dr. Zank earns IEEE best paper award

Dr. Gary Zank, photo by Michael Mercier / UAH
Dr. Gary Zank, photo by Michael Mercier / UAH

“Space Plasma Physics: A Review,” a paper coauthored by Future Technologies & enabling Plasma Processes (FTPP) Director Dr. Gary Zank of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), has earned the 2025 IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science Best Paper award.

“So very gratifying to be notified of the award,” says Dr. Zank, who is also the Aerojet Rocketdyne endowed chair of the Department of Space Science and director of UAH’s Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR). “This kind of exposure draws attention to the world-class science and technology being done at UAH, in Huntsville and more generally in Alabama, and the federal agency support that makes this possible.” 

IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. The annual IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science Best Paper Award is given to the paper deemed the best among those published in the journal three years before the year of the award. The award goes to the paper judged to be of quantifiable usefulness to the community on the basis of the number of downloads, literature citations, quality, clarity of presentation, originality, significance and contributions to the field.

extensive collaboration

“The paper was an extensive international collaboration surveying the broad field of space plasma physics with the intention of providing a comprehensive overview of the entire discipline,” says Dr. Zank.

“In part, this was to provide a graduate student with a perspective of all of space science at a level that was readily accessible. This meant that we had to find a broad group of authors who are authorities in their fields, so most institutions had one representative. I wrote a couple of the sections and had input into some others.”

Dr. Zank authored parts of the paper about:

  • the acceleration, transport, and properties of energetic charged particles, including solar energetic particles and cosmic rays;
  • the interaction of heliosphere with the local interstellar medium, including pickup ions; and
  • the nature of magnetized turbulence in the very local interstellar medium.

“This was to some extent a paper that synthesized numerous scientific and technological space plasma fields, and in a sense was therefore representative of and drew on much of the FTPP expertise that we have developed over the past decade,” says Dr. Zank.

“This paper provides the kind of overview of both the important scientific and technological advances in space that our Huntsville Cummings Research Park and Redstone Arsenal industries and colleagues need to be aware of to remain competitive in the aerospace and defense domain.”

A five-year, $20 million National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative, FTPP is a statewide consortium of UAH, The University of Alabama, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Auburn University, Tuskegee University, the University of South Alabama, Alabama A&M University, Alabama State University, Oakwood University and CFD Research Corp. Its goal is to advance plasma science and engineering (PSE) in Alabama, creating a base for PSE in the state and boosting Alabama to a regional and national PSE leadership role.

The paper’s goals and many of the topics, especially those about which Dr. Zank wrote, are directly related to many of the scientific topics of the FTPP project. For example, a significant part of FTPP is the study of space weather, which both scientifically and as an emerging predictive technology is directly related to solar energetic particles and cosmic rays that can destroy sensitive computer chips and instrumentation onboard satellites. As well, the heliosphere’s interaction with the interstellar medium is a fundamental partially ionized plasma problem that FTPP is focused on directly. FTPP supported both Dr. Zank’s time and part of the page charges of the paper.

The paper directly addressed the educational goals of FTPP, says Dr. Zank.

“This paper illustrates the kind of catalyst role the NSF-supported FTPP program allows in acting as an expertise bridge between the industry, commercial and scientific research communities, for the advantage of all.”