W. H. Matthaeus is a Unidel Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware and a member of the Bartol Research Institute, where he joined the faculty in 1983. He served as Interim Director of NASA’s Delaware Space Grant Consortium and the NASA EPSCoR program in Delaware since January 2016 and was appointed Director in September 2016.
Prof. Matthaeus’ research interests include space plasma physics, theoretical plasma physics, hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic turbulence theory, global and local relaxation processes in turbulence, scattering and transport of charged particles in turbulence, magnetic reconnection in a turbulent environment, acceleration mechanisms for charged particles, computer simulation of turbulence, analysis of turbulence and plasma properties using solar wind and magnetospheric space craft data, and computational methods. He has also worked in development of numerical methods, heliospheric modulation of galactic cosmic rays, and selected topics in laboratory plasma physics. Recently he has been interested in applying theoretical ideas about intermittency and coherent structures in turbulence to hot, low density space plasmas. This is a fruitful new area with applications found in numerous recent and planned spacecraft missions.
Prof. Matthaeus has been PI on grants from NASA, NSF and the USDOE. He is Co-Investigator on Cluster-PEACE, on the MMS mission, and on the energetic particle instruments on Solar Probe Plus. He is author or co-author of nearly 400 publications with a total of over 17,000 citations and a Hirsch h-factor of 71. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Physics. Prof. Matthaeus is the recipient of the 2019 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics.