Dr. Sibeck's research focuses upon the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere, the regions where most space weather effects are felt. Following a post-doc working on AMPTE/CCE observations of the Earth's radiation belts from 1985-1987, he advanced to a Principal Professional Staff position at nearby JHU/APL. Here he became an AGU fellow, received the AGU's Macelwane award, actively participated in the Czech, Russian, and Slovak Prognoz and Interball spacecraft programs (ultimately receiving a medal from Charles University in Prague for his services), led successful efforts to preserve and provide endangered NASA magnetospheric data sets, organized a series of competitively awarded research groups at Switzerland's International Space Science Institute, and participated in a study to define the USAF's space weather needs.
Upon moving to NASA/GSFC in 2002, he was almost immediately detailed to NASA/HQ, where he served a two-year term as Deputy Program Scientist setting up and running the Living With a Star (LWS) program, NASA's preeminent space weather program. Since returning to NASA/GSFC in 2004, his work as Project and Mission Scientists has focused on the remarkably successful THEMIS/ARTEMIS Explorer and LWS Van Allen Probes missions. In recent years he has taken on the leadership of a cross-disciplinary group prototyping a wide field-of-view soft x-ray imager with applications for solar wind-magnetosphere and solar wind-planetary applications. Nevertheless, community service and research remain at the core of his interests. He has served as editor or guest editor for several major journals and led the National Science Foundation's Geospace Environment Modeling program, which organizes the preeminent annual meeting of magnetospheric physicists in the United States. He was on a committee that reviewed the full range of NSF Upper Atmospheric activities and he has served continuously on the ESA Cluster Active Archive advisory committee for the past decade. He is Past-President of the American Geophysical Union's Space Physics and Aeronomy section. His most frequently cited first-authored papers concern the responses of the Earth's dayside magnetosphere, ionosphere, and magnetotail to varying solar wind conditions. It has been his privilege to learn from and mentor a series of extraordinarily productive postdoctoral students.
Publications: 387 refereed, of which 75 are first-authored (h-index = 56, cited 14423 times by other authors). First-authored topics range from solar wind structures to transient events in the Earth's equatorial and polar ionosphere. Recent research focuses upon simulations, microphysics of the foreshock, the magnetopause, and geomagnetic pulsations