Julia K. Thalmann
ST Solar-Terrestrial Sciences
The 2017 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists is awarded to Julia K. Thalmann for her notable contributions to understanding the magnetic field configurations in the solar atmosphere in general, and those associated to flares and CMEs in particular.
Julia Thalmann receives the Arne Richter Award for her studies of the magnetic field configuration of the Sun. This research area is a high priority research area in the field of solar-terrestrial science, as the magnetic field is the source of solar activity. Thalmann contributed to this field already during her PhD at the German Max-Plank Institute for Solar System Research (MPS). Her thesis, completed in 2010, was dedicated to magnetic field modeling using non-linear force free fields. Then, after having successfully accomplished a follow-up DFG (German Research Foundation) postdoc research project on the evolution of coronal magnetic fields at MPS, she became the Principal Investigator on her own FWF (Austrian Science Fund) project on magnetic field modeling of the solar atmosphere at the University of Graz. Within this project, she focuses on the characteristics of magnetic field configurations associated to flares and coronal mass ejections impacting Earth. She recently contributed to our understanding of the energy released by the confined X-class flares produced by the unusually large active region AR 12192 in October 2014. Thalman’s contribution to the field has already reached high international visibility which is best reflected in her involvement in two of international team efforts of the International Space Science Institute in Bern dedicated to the topic of magnetic field modelling and, in particular, the benchmarking of existing numerical methods to reconstruct the magnetic field in the outer solar atmosphere. Her outstanding scientific achievements are accomplished by her teaching activities and the supervision of students at the University of Graz. Her record of outstanding publications, team efforts, and contributions to international networks are of great value for the scientific community. With her research efforts, Thalmann already contributed to a better understanding of solar-terrestrial physics starting from the very basis, the magnetic field in the surface layers of the Sun and in the atmosphere above. In conclusion, her scientific achievements and ambitions make her a well deserving choice for this year’s award.