Dr. Joseph Huba, a research physicist in the Plasma Physics Division at the Naval Research Laboratory was chosen to give the 2011 The Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) program Prize Lecture at the annual meeting that was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico in June. He was selected for his pioneering work in modeling the earth's ionosphere and ionospheric irregularities. This is the second CEDAR Prize Lecture given by a Plasma Physics Division scientist. Dr. Paul Bernhardt presented the lecture in 2010.
The CEDAR program is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and focuses on the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The CEDAR Prize lecture was instituted in 1989 and honors an outstanding science contribution within the past five years. Each year CEDAR sponsors a workshop attended by 300 or more students and scientists who present the latest research results in the field. The recipient of the award presents an invited forty-minute lecture at the annual CEDAR meeting.
Huba's primary area of expertise is the stability of collisional and collisionless plasmas. In this regard he has performed a number of linear and nonlinear studies of a variety of kinetic and fluid plasma instabilities using both analytical and numerical techniques. Huba's research interests have included the study of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, the nonlinear theory of interchange instabilities, plasma opening switch dynamics, dynamics of the solar atmosphere, wave phenomena in the ionospheres of earth and Venus, and non-ideal MHD dynamics (i.e., Hall MHD). His current research interests are modeling of the earth's ionosphere and plasmasphere. Huba has over 150 research publications to his credit in these areas.
Huba earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1971, a doctorate in 1975 and an M.B.A. in 1982 at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining NRL, he was employed by Science Applications, Inc., as a research scientist from 1977 to 1981. Huba came to NRL in 1975 as an NRC/NRL research associate. He served as head of the Geophysical and Plasma Dynamics Branch from 1983 until 1989, at which time it was incorporated into the Space Plasma Branch. Huba is currently head of the Space Plasma Physics Section of the Beam Physics Branch.
Huba is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI). Huba served as an associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research from 1983 to 1986. He was a member of the NSF CEDAR Science Steering Committee (2008-2010) and has served on a number of NSF and NASA panels.
Huba's honors include the 1991, 1999, and 2003 Editor's Citation for Excellence in Refereeing: Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), the NRL Alan Berman Research Publication Award (1981, 2004, 2010), and the NRL E.O. Hulburt Award (2008).
The NSF is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.