Derek Schaeffer

Professor Schaeffer is a plasma physicist whose research focuses on experiments and numerical simulations of strongly driven magnetized plasma interactions relevant to laboratory based astrophysics and high-energy-density physics. He earned his PhD from UCLA in 2014, before moving to Princeton University, where he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate, and then an Associate Research Scholar in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences and a Visiting Scientist in the Theory Department at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. His UCLA faculty appointment began in 2022. Among his major interests are magnetized collisionless shocks, magnetic reconnection, and ion-scale (mini) magnetospheres, all of which are commonly observed in heliospheric and astrophysical settings.  In his free time, he is an avid reader and oenophile, and enjoys occasionally writing Star Trek themed software for controlling powerful lasers.