PhD Student
Department of Space and Climate Physics
I am a final year PhD student originally from Sighisoara, Romania. I received my MSci in Astrophysics from University college London in 2021 and started my PhD under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Coates in the same year. My primary areas of research are pick-up ions, wave-particle interactions, magnetic reconnection and heavy ions, with an emphasis on investigating these topics in the Saturnian magnetosphere. My work is roughly evenly split between spacecraft data analysis and particle-in-cell simulations.
During my PhD I have undertaken a 1-year long term attachment (LTA) through STFC. Through this programme I undertook research at Tohoku University in Japan, University of Michigan and Georgia Institute of Technology in the USA, spending 4 months at each institution. At Tohoku University I worked with Prof. Yuto Katoh and Dr. Yohei Kawazura on magnetic reconnection using the pCANS PIC code. At University of Michigan, my reconnection work from Japan continued under the supervision of Prof. Xianzhe Jia working with the AEPIC and BATSRUS codes, part of SWMF. Finally, at Georgia Tech I finalized my work on pick-up ion distributions at Saturn, working with Prof. Sven Simon.

Research Group | Planetary Science |
Supervisors | Prof Andrew Coates, Dr Daniel Verscharen |
Contact | cristian.radulescu.17@ucl.ac.uk |