| Name | Yukioshi (Toshi) Nishimura |
| Affiliation | Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles |
| Job title | Assistant Researcher |
| Supervisor | Professor Larry Lyons |
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| Office | Math and Sciences 7115 |
| Graduating high school | Nagata High school, Kobe, Japan |
| Graduating university | Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan (adv. Prof. Takayuki Ono) |
| Past postdoc job | Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan (adv. Prof. Takashi Kikuchi) |
| UCLA (adv. Prof. Lyons) | |
| Hometown | Kobe, Japan |
Substorm is the most dynamic and specutacular phenomenon in auroral phenomena. While the phenonenology has been well documented, the time sequence leading to substorm onset has been a long-standing debate for more than 40 years in the space physics community. We found precursor of auroral substorms using the THEMIS all-sky imager network. The pre-onset sequence starts from the poleward boundary of the auroral oval leading to faint auroral streamers toward the equatorward boundary, suggesting enhanced earthward plasma flows in the magnetosphere. This result was selected as a NASA press release  |
Pulsating auroras are beautiful emissions that blink in the atmosphere with a periodicity of 5 to 40 seconds. Earlier work in October, based on observations both from NASA's THEMIS spacecraft and from the ground, we solved the mystery of how the pulsating auroras were formed -- these spectacular light shows were driven by chorus waves observed deep in space. The lessons we are learning from this novel experimental technique is links aurora in the ionosphere to a location which is separated by over 40,000 km in the magnetosphere. This work was published in Science and covered by News media  |
| Plasma convection is fundamental in energy transport in the ionosphere and magnetosphere. We are studying convection electric fields in space using spacecraft and radars to understand how electromagnetic energy is transported in the coupled system. |