Seth Claudepierre

Seth Claudepierre received his M.S. and Ph.D in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005 and 2008, respectively. After graduate school, he spent one year on the research staff in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is currently a Senior Member of the Technical Staff in the Space Sciences Department at The Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles, CA, where he has been since 2009.  The Aerospace Corporation is a private, non-profit Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) that supports a variety of civil, commercial and national security space programs.

Seth conducts basic research in space plasma physics, with applications to the near-Earth space radiation environment, known as the Van Allen radiation belts.  The goal of this research is to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the variability in energetic particle fluxes in the radiation belts, which consist of relativistic electrons, protons, and heavier ions trapped by the Earth’s geomagnetic field. This is one component of the emerging field known as "space weather," where solar flares and associated solar eruptions induce a wide variety of electromagnetic and plasma phenomenon in the near-Earth space environment, in the atmosphere, and on the ground.

Seth’s current research focuses on the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere, the region of near-Earth space where the solar wind is deflected and rerouted by the geomagnetic field.  These studies seek to understand how the solar wind generates ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves in the magnetosphere and how these waves interact with radiation belt particles. ULF waves are quasi-sinusoidal, standing magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves, analogous to standing waves on a string.  The scale sizes and propagation distances of such waves are immense, on the order of many Earth radii (1 Earth radius = 6370 km), and are responsible for coupling solar energy into the Earth’s radiation belts.

One of Seth’s largest projects is supporting the processing, calibration, analysis and interpretation of data obtained by the ECT/MagEIS instruments on board the NASA Van Allen Probes spacecraft. The Van Allen Probes are identical twin satellites launched in 2012 that chase one another in geotransfer orbits (a roughly 1x6 Earth radii ellipse) through the Earth’s radiation belts. They are instrumented with a suite of state-of-the-art instruments designed to make detailed measurements of the particles and electromagnetic fields in the radiation belts.

Seth has received a number of awards for his professional efforts, including The Aerospace Corporation Corporate Achievement Award, The NASA Group Achievement Award, and an Excellence in Reviewing Citation from the Geophysical Research Letters journal. 

Seth benefitted greatly from the education he received in the APPM department. Of particular note are the programming and scientific computing skills he learned from Professor Tom Manteuffel and the wave propagation theory and Fourier analysis he learned from Professor Harvey Segur.  He uses these and many other skills he learned in graduate school on a daily basis and has fond memories of his time in Boulder. He is active in volunteer work within his community and greatly enjoys all aspects of Southern California beach life. He can be reached at sethclaudepierre@gmail.com and would enjoy hearing from APPM friends.