I would like to participate to the Hong Kong Laureate Forum, as the unique interaction with peers and senior academics will help me shape my starting career in solar physics. My research is at the forefront of understanding the effects of partial ionization and charge-neutral interactions on magnetic reconnection, a process believed to be responsible for many impulsive, energetic astrophysical events. In solar plasmas, magnetic reconnection boosts fast plasma flows, accelerates charges and heats the surrounding layers. I have explored the role of plasmoid dynamics in altering magnetic reconnection in multi-fluid, highly collisional, partially ionized plasmas, a regime that hasn’t been fully understood yet. I am also exploring the particle acceleration side of magnetic reconnection far from the Sun, in the collisionless plasmas of the heliospheric current sheet. I worked on numerical models of multi-ion compression acceleration and found energy spectra matching the in-situ data from Parker Solar Probe. I am also involved in the SUNDISH project, a collaboration whose goal is to characterize the solar emission through detailed radio observations in a challenging frequency interval. The overarching goal of my work is to incorporate small-scale plasma processes in state-of-the-art solar models, and further the field’s understanding of multi-scale systems.

My research focuses on what mechanisms contribute to fast explosive phenomena and particle acceleration in solar and space plasmas. I explore the intricate physics that shapes eruptive events embedded in the solar atmosphere, and how these in turn affect the heliospheric environment surrounding us. Magnetic reconnection is the fundmental plasma phenomenon associated with the instabilities of plasma. I employ single and multi-fluid magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations to model these systems, and I include the effect of particle transport to analyze how individual charges move and are accelerated during the impulsive, reconnection-driven energy release. I closely collaborate with observers to make comparisons with space mission observations (by Parker Solar Probe) and validate my modeling, and I employ radio observations to fill a gap that currently exists in modeling the solar atmospheric emission. Gaining the ability to predict explosive events on the Sun has significant implications both from a theoretical perspective - it could solve many open questions related to both the heliosphere (from small eruptions and jets to solar flares, up to the acceleration of energetic ions across the heliosphere) and larger astrophysical contexts - and a more practical approach to space weather forecast and laboratory experiments.