معرفی
Katherine Goodrich is an Assistant Professor at West Virginia University (WVU), specializing in plasma and space physics. Her research focuses on collisionless shocks, plasma turbulence, and wave-particle interactions in space environments. She is affiliated with NASA-funded missions like the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) and Parker Solar Probe (PSP), which enable her to study plasma dynamics across Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, and Venus. Her work includes developing electric field instrumentation and analyzing data from these missions to understand microphysical processes in space plasmas.
Dr. Goodrich received her Ph.D. in space physics from the University of Colorado Boulder (2017) and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory (2018–2020). Her current projects include contributions to the TRACERS mission, aiming to study reconnection and cusp electrodynamics, and the MAKOS mission concept, which investigates collisionless shocks. She collaborates on the LIEFSI campaign, a lab-based effort to simulate space electric fields.
Her research interests span microphysics of shocks, plasma turbulence structures, and advanced instrumentation. Notable recent studies include analyses of Venusian magnetosheath dynamics using PSP data and investigations into electrostatic waves in Earth's foreshock. She emphasizes the importance of accurate thermal velocity measurements in the solar wind and explores challenges in observing shock microphysics.
Dr. Goodrich actively contributes to NASA mission science teams and has no listed awards in the provided text. Her advising and grant activities are tied to her mission collaborations and instrument development efforts. She is part of teams advancing knowledge in heliophysics and planetary magnetospheres, with future work focusing on upcoming missions like TRACERS and MAKOS.
