Jacob Bortnik is a leader in numerical modeling of microscopic plasma physics processes (i.e., particle-in-cell simulations of plasma wave growth and excitation), global modeling of particle dynamics in the near-Earth space environment, wave propagation, and wave-particle interactions. He solved a long-standing problem on the origin of plasmaspheric hiss which was published in the journal Nature and Science in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Prof. Bortnik has conducted many leading space plasma experiments in the LAPD (published in leading journals such as Physical Review Letters), and is currently a world-leader in the application of advanced machine learning techniques to modeling and understanding the space environment.
He was the Chair of the National Science Foundation’s “Geospace Environment Modeling” (GEM) program for the term 2017-2019; he is the IAGA co-chair emeritus (together with Dr. Mark Clilverd as URSI co-chair) of the joint URSI/IAGA working group entitled VERSIM: VLF/ELF Remote Sensing of the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere (August 2013- present). He is the Co-chair emeritus (together with Prof. Craig Rodger) of SCOSTEP’s 5-year VarSITI program (2014-2018), under the sub-element “Specification and Prediction of the Coupled Inner Magnetospheric Environment” (SPeCIMEN).