Welcome! I am an Associate Professor at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and a part of the Otago space physics group. We study a variety of topics in astrophysical plasma physics and fluid dynamics. We focus on understanding how basic dynamical processes – e.g., instabilities and turbulence – affect astrophysical systems like the solar corona and wind, stars, galaxy clusters, accretion disks, planet formation, the interstellar medium, and cosmic rays. Our research involves a mix of analytic “pen and paper” theory, numerical simulations, and code development.
Our group at Otago
Please visit our research page or publications for more information. If you are interested in joining the group, please shoot me an email at jonathan.squire [at] otago [dot] ac [dot] nz
Or, just take a look at some fun climbing photos
About me
I grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand, doing an undergraduate degree in physics with music on the side at the Univerity of Otago. I then went to Princeton University for graduate school, funded by a Fulbright Science and Technology fellowship, and studied at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, graduating in 2015. After 2.5 years as a Sherman Fairchild postdoctoral fellow at the Caltech astronomy department, I decided to come back to New Zealand, making the return to Otago in 2018.
PhD Projects
If you are interested in a PhD project, please send me an email. We have several different projects available, mostly focused on the heating of the solar corona and solar wind turbulence. Otago has a generous PhD scholarship program, which is open to both domestic and international students.