HAO 2012 Profiles In Science: Dr. Steven Tomczyk

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Specialities: Solar Instrumentation, Observation of Solar Magnetic Field, Velocity Field and Waves

Dr. Steven Tomczyk is the Assistant Director for Instrumentation of the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Steve has spent his career developing instrumentation for the remote sensing of magnetic and velocity fields on the Sun. His current focus is on measuring magnetic fields in the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, in order to understand and eventually predict ejections of material which influence the Earth and its environment. Steve is the principal investigator of the Coronal Solar Magnetism Observatory, a proposed facility dedicated to monitoring coronal magnetic activity.

Summary of Achievements: Dr. Tomczyk continues to lead the development of the Coronal Solar Magnetism Observatory as the project moves towards a Preliminary Design Review in late 2013. He also contributes to the development of HAO's K-Coronagraph and Chromospheric Magnetometer instruments.

Publications

(1) Gallagher, Dennis; Steven Tomczyk, Haiying Zhang, Peter G. Nelson, 2012: Optical design of the COSMO large coronagraph, SPIE 8444, 3 (doi 10.1117/12.927155).

(2) de Wijn, Alfred G.; Christian Bethge, Steven Tomczyk, Scott McIntosh, 2012: The Chromosphere and Prominence Magnetometer, SPIE 8444, 78 (doi 10.1117/12.926395).