Michael W. Liemohn

Professor

Location

1420 Climate & Space Research Building
2455 Hayward Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2143

Additional Title(s)

  • Associate Director, U-M ADVANCE Program
  • Formerly (2019-2023): Director, University of Michigan Space Institute

Related links

Education

  • Ph.D., M.S., Atmospheric and Space Science, University of Michigan, 1997
  • B.S., Physics and Math, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, 1992

Teaching

  • Fall Term 2023: SPACE 581: Space Policy and Management
  • Fall Term 2023: CLIMATE/SPACE 501-004: CLaSP Professional Seminar
  • Winter Term 2023: SPACE/CLIMATE 423, Data Analysis and Visualization for Geoscientists
  • Fall Term 2022: CLIMATE/SPACE 551, Advanced Fluid Dynamics

Professional Service

Some recent/big service roles:

Research Interests

Plasma transport in the ionosphere and magnetosphere of the Earth and other solar system bodies.

  • Energetic particle transport in the Earth’s inner magnetosphere
  • Electron and ion transport in the Mars space environment
  • Kinetic theory and modeling
  • Interactions between hot and cold plasma components
  • Plasmaspheric dynamics and modeling
  • Ring current dynamics and modeling
  • Global magnetospheric dynamics and modeling
  • Mars pick-up ion sources, motion, and fate
  • Solar wind and photoelectrons in the strong crustal field region of Mars
  • Plasma wave excitation and wave-particle interactions
  • Giant planet plasma dynamics
  • Solar wind electron physics

Biography

  • I had a postdoctoral position at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center before returning to the University of Michigan as an Assistant Research Scientist in late 1998. I then became tenure-track faculty in 2006.
  • PhD committees chaired or co-chaired:  15 successfully defended (Xiaohua Fang, Jichun Zhang, Xia Cai, Raluca Ilie, Shannon Curry, Roxanne Katus, Shaosui Xu, Lois Smith, Blake Johnson, Abigail Azari, Alicia Petersen, Sinh Trung from Physics, Alex Shane, Brian Swiger, Agnit Mukhopadhyay) and 4 in progress (Kaitlin Doublestein, Erika Hathaway, Nii-Boi Quartey from Applied Physics, and Stephanie Colon-Rodriguez).
  • Prospective PhD students: I typically have 3 or 4 PhD students at any one time, which means that I take a new grad student most years.  My current projects span global magnetospheric magnetospheric dynamics, energetic particle transport, and MI-coupling for the space environments of not only Earth but also other planets.
  • Prospective undergrad researchers: I typically have 1 or 2 undergrad students working on directed research projects, via SPACE 499. After a term or two, if the working relationship is mutually agreeable, then I will sometimes continue supporting an undergrad researcher as an hourly employee.

Awards

  • U-M College of Engineering Trudy Huebner Service Excellence Award, 2023
  • U-M College of Engineering Ted Kennedy Family Team Excellence Award, 2019
  • U-M College of Engineering Monroe-Brown Foundation Education Excellence Award, 2018
  • Outstanding Research Scientist Award, University of Michigan, 2002
  • Refereed papers for leading peer-reviewed journals in space science and proposals for many agencies

Publications

  • As of January 2023, author or co-author of 241 peer-reviewed publications in print, press, or submitted (64 first author) and 717 scientific presentations (91 invited).
    • Please see my CV (link above) for more information about my publications and research activities.
  • Over my 6 years as EiC of JGR Space Physics, I wrote 300 posts at my blog: JGR-Space Physics blog
  • My ISI Web of Science ResearcherID number is H-8703-2012.
  • My ORCID number is 0000-0002-7039-2631.