Dr. James Chen

Plasma Physics Division
Naval Research Laboratory

Dr. Chen is a Senior Research Physicist with the Beam Physics Branch, Plasma Physics Divison at the Naval Research Laboratory. He leads a theoretical solar-terrestrial physics group and has been the Principal Investigator of a number of ONR and NASA funded programs involving solar physics, interplanetary space physics, solar wind-magnetosphere coupling, magnetospheric plasma dynamics, and application of nonlinear dynamics to space plasma physics.

In the 1980s, Dr. Chen did extensive research on the chaotic particle dynamics in the magnetotail and the collisionless tearing mode. In the early 1980s, he started his research on the dynamics of magnetic flux ropes in the solar corona, which has evolved into the current efforts to understand the physics of CMEs. He has also developed a Baysian method of predicting geomagnetic storms that has been put into operation at the SEC/NOAA in Boulder, CO. Prior to his research efforts in space physics at NRL, Dr. Chen carried out theoretical studies of laboratory plasmas at MIT's Plasma Fusion Center (1979-1981). His Ph.D. thesis research focused on the generation and acceleration of relativistic electrons in the polar cap region of a pulsar as well as laboratory devices.

Dr. Chen received an Alan Berman Research Publication Award in 1996. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and is a member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and Sigma Xi. He was Chair (2000-2001) of the Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics of the APS. He has served on program committees of U.S. and international conferences, the AGU/SPA Student Awards Committee (1996--1998), and as a Principal Technical Adviser to the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Space Architect.