Tyler Mixa

OS Ocean Sciences

The 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Tyler Mixa for the poster/PICO entitled:

Gravity Wave Interactions with Fine Structures in the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere (Mixa, T.; Fritts, D.; Bossert, K.; Laughman, B.; Wang, L.; Lund, T.; Kantha, L.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Tyler Mixa is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado Boulder with Dr. David Fritts and Dr. Lakshmi Kantha. He researches high frequency atmospheric gravity wave and fine structure interactions using large-scale DNS simulations guided by observational data. The work is motivated by a need to characterize influential gravity wave dynamics in the MLT occurring at spatial scales that are too small to resolve with global scale models and difficult to quantify with observational data. His research goals include identifying the quantitative influences of gravity wave-fine structure interactions, determining how these dynamics unfold in realistic stratifications observed in the MLT, and determining the extent to which these dynamics influence similar flow environments in the rest of the atmosphere. These studies will yield an improved fundamental understanding of gravity wave-fine structure dynamics and demonstrate their importance throughout the atmosphere.