The Fuselier de SwRI elected to the National Academy of Sciences
SAN ANTONIO – May 4, 2021 – Dr Stephen Fuselier, Executive Director of the Space Science Branch of the Southwest Research Institute, has been elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
NAS membership is one of the highest honors bestowed on a scientist or engineer in the United States. With this distinction, Fuselier was also elected to the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Sciences (TAMEST). TAMEST is made up of the Texas-based members of the three national academies – of medicine, engineering, and science – the Royal Society and the state’s 11 Nobel Laureates.
Fuselier was one of 120 engineers and scientists elected this year to the NAS, which has 2,461 active members. Notable alumni include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and Orville Wright. About 500 current and deceased members of the Academy have won Nobel Prizes.
“This is a great honor for Stephen and a great honor for the Southwest Research Institute,” said Dr Jim Burch, vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at SwRI. “Stephen’s research has contributed significantly to a better understanding of solar wind, magnetic reconnection, and auroras.”
Fuselier, who joined SwRI in 2011, is well known for his fundamental contributions to understanding the physics of solar wind interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere, comets, and the interstellar medium. He holds key positions in several NASA missions, including co-investigator for the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), co-investigator and sensor manager for the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission and co-investigator and responsible for the Hot Plasma Composition Experiment (HPCA) instrument for the magnetospheric multiscale mission led by SwRI. He is also co-investigator for the Twin Rocket Investigation of Cusp Electrodynamics (TRICE) and Deputy Principal Investigator for the Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS) missions. He also contributed to previous missions, as co-investigator for the IMAGE mission (imager led by SwRI for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration) and as US co-investigator for the Rosetta Orbiter spectrometer for ion analysis and neutral (ROSINA), an instrument aboard ESA’s Rosetta. mission.
Fuselier is the author or co-author of more than 460 articles published in scientific journals and conference proceedings. He has received several accolades over his 35-year career, including the Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 1995 and the Hannes Alfvén Medal from the European Geosciences Union in 2016.
Fuselier holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Southern California and a master’s and doctorate in physics from the University of Iowa.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, non-profit honorary society of eminent academics engaged in scientific and technical research, dedicated to the advancement of science and technology for the general well-being. Founded in 1863, the NAS has served to “investigate, examine, experiment and report on any subject of science or art” whenever the government calls it.
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