Tuija I. Pulkkinen

The 2017 Julius Bartels Medal is awarded to Tuija I. Pulkkinen for her key contributions in solar-terrestrial science, scientific management, academic leadership, and services to the space community.

Tuija Pulkkinen is an internationally highly recognised scientist best known for her research focussing on the understanding of magnetospheric dynamics and solar wind – magnetosphere coupling. Her main contributions have been the modelling of thin current sheets in the magnetotail during the substorm growth phase and understanding the subsequent importance of this for magnetotail instabilities as part of the substorm cycle. Pulkkinen carried out comparative studies of various magnetospheric states including pseudo-breakups, ordinary and sawtooth types of substorms, and steady convection events. She has broad experience in data analyses, combining the ground-based and space-based observations. Additionally, she is highly active in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) modelling. Pulkkinen is one of those scientists who recognised early on the strong potential of global MHD simulation and actively applied that unique research tool in magnetospheric research. In particular, the adaptive data-based magnetospheric modelling approach was initiated early in her research career. Subsequently, the only world-known European-design global MHD code was developed at the Finnish Meteorological Institute and this part of her research activity still continues to grow. Pulkkinen performed her scientific studies in a highly collaborative way at several renowned research institutions in the United States and in Finland. The range of her scientific achievements can best be judged from a total of ~240 publications in international refereed journals and from the still rising citation rate, approaching 5000, leading to an h-index of 37. In summary, the Committee strongly supports Pulkkinen’s nomination for the Julius Bartels Medal, which she deserves for her excellence in research in solar-terrestrial sciences.