Biography:

Jamie Sue Rankin is a research scientist interested in energetic particle and plasma heliophysics. She received her B.A. in Music Composition and B.S. in Physics at the University of Utah. She developed sound-to-electricity transducers for thermoacoustic heat engines with the Center of Acoustic Cooling Technology and modeled radar detection of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray air showers with the Telescope Array Project. She completed her Ph.D. in Physics at Caltech in 2018. For her thesis work, Jamie investigated and characterized an unusual galactic cosmic ray pitch angle anisotropy discovered by Voyager 1 in the local interstellar medium. As an experimentalist in the Caltech Space Radiation Laboratory, she also characterized prototype, engineering, and spaceflight detectors for the high energy particle instrument (EPI-Hi) on the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (IS☉IS) for NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission. At Princeton, she is using both Voyager and IBEX observations to investigate interactions between the heliosphere and the local interstellar medium, as well as analyzing PSP observations. She collaborates with Prof. McComas to develop the Space Physics laboratory and a corresponding hands-on physics laboratory class for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students at Princeton.