User:Heliophysics/Susan Lepri

Susan Lepri is an American physicist and associate professor in the Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering department of the University of Michigan. She has made significant contributions to understanding the source of the solar wind through measurement and analysis of heavy ions in the heliosphere. She is principal investigator for the Heavy Ion Sensor (HIS) will be launched on Solar Orbiter in early 2020.

Research Career
Lepri's research focuses on measuring and interpreting heavy ion abundance and charge states in the solar wind, which can reveal unique information about the physical processes by which the solar wind is heated and released. During her PhD at the University of Michigan with Thomas Zurbuchen, she demonstrated that coronal mass ejections undergo significantly more heating than the ambient solar wind. More recently, Lepri has worked on developing new instrumentation for measuring heavy ions. She is the principal investigator for the Heavy Ion Sensor (HIS) component of the Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) instrument will be launched on Solar Orbiter in early 2020. She is also developing new instrumentation for the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), due to launch in 2024.