Associate Professor
Research Interests: Aurora; Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-Thermosphere Interaction at Earth; GPS Scintillation and Position Error.
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/toshinishimurabu/
Toshi Nishimura received his PhD from Tohoku University, Japan, in 2009. He worked as a researcher at UCLA until 2016, and he is now an associate professor at Boston University. He received the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2016 and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Tohoku University in 2024. His primary research interest is magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling using space- and ground-based observations, as well as its space weather impacts. He identified the sequence of events leading to substorm auroral onset, which was highlighted in a NASA press release. He also discovered the driver of a type of aurora called pulsating aurora, with results published in Science. He currently works on the impact of ionospheric structures on GPS positioning accuracy. His research has been featured in a number of science news media articles, including ones by NASA Science News and The Washington Post.