Lin Fellowship

Robert P. Lin in 2008, upon his retirement as Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory.

About the Fellowship

The Robert P. Lin Graduate Fellowship was established in 2012 with a gift from the Lin family. It is used to support outstanding current or incoming graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley who pursue research related to space sciences, including, but not limited to students studying Physics, Astronomy, or Engineering. Recipients of the fellowship demonstrate a high level of academic distinction. Preference is given to students who pursue research projects associated with Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). APPLYING: Graduate students from all departments on the UC Berkeley campus are eligible to apply to the Lin Fellowship. The Fellowship is also open to incoming graduate students. The fellowship provides funds for summer work. Interested students should send a CV, cover letter, and statement of research interests to lin.fellowship@ssl.berkeley.edu. Applications are reviewed mid-March every year.

Prof. Lin was a long-time faculty member in the Department of Physics at UC Berkeley who served for many years as the director of SSL. Prof. Lin spent most of his career at UC Berkeley and led a revolution in our understanding of high-energy solar physics. He made pioneering discoveries of X-rays and gamma-rays from solar flares using several generations of instruments, culminating in NASA’s RHESSI mission. Lin also designed instruments to make in situ space plasma measurements and used them to measure surface magnetic and electric fields at the Moon and Mars. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and collaborated on many space research projects internationally. His accomplishments were many and his impact on space science at UC Berkeley was profound. Lin was an especially effective teacher and graduate advisor and this fellowship serves to underscore the importance with which he viewed higher education.

“He really defined what SSL was. People around the country called it ‘Bob’s lab.’ “

– Stuart Bale

UC Berkeley Professor of Physics and former Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory

2023 FELLOWS 

Tamar Ervin is a first year graduate student in the Physics department. She is working with Dr. Stuart Bale to study the origins of different classes of the solar wind through modeling and the use of in-situ measurements from Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter. She also works with Dr. Milo Buitrago-Casas on the Solar Aspect and Alignment System for the FOXSI-4 Sounding Rocket.

Tamar Ervin

2023 Lin Fellow

Meredith Wieber is a first-year graduate student in the Physics department. She is working with Dr. Pascal Saint-Hilaire to prepare the GRIPS high altitude balloon for its second flight from Antarctica. GRIPS will observe X-rays and gamma rays from the sun with the goal of understanding electron and ion acceleration mechanisms in solar flares. This summer Meredith will be focusing on testing the new readout system for the specialized germanium detectors.

Meredith Wieber

2023 Lin Fellow

2022 FELLOWS

Orlando is a second-year graduate student in the Earth and Planetary Science Department at UC Berkeley. He is working with Dr. Davin Larson this summer at SSL to study solar wind electron scattering mechanisms near the Sun using in-situ measurements from the Parker Solar Probe mission. Additionally, Orlando is working with Dr. Michael Manga to determine crustal magnetization scales on Mars near the Insight mission landing site.

Orlando Romeo

2022 Lin Fellow

Aidi is a doctoral student in the Mechanical Engineering department working with Prof. Philip Marcus in the Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab. As a Lin fellow, he is working with Dr. Anton Ermakov at SSL to study the three-dimensional structure of the Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter. He is constructing a three-dimensional GRS model and trying to compare the model’s gravity signature with the recent observations from the Juno space mission. Besides that, he is also looking for a stability condition that can further constrain the GRS models.

Aidi Zhang

2022 Lin Fellow

Christian is a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy, working at the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE), with Dr. Stuart Bale and Dr. Raul Monsalve. LuSEE will deploy a radio telescope on the lunar farside in order to detect the cosmic signature of the Dark Ages by measuring the 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen. This requires careful calibration, due to galactic foregrounds that are several orders of magnitude brighter than the expected 21-cm signal. Specifically, Christian works on optimizing the LuSEE antenna design by simulating observations and assessing the ability of LuSEE remove the bright foregrounds and make a measurement of the cosmic signal.

Christian Bye

2022 Lin Fellow

2021 FELLOWS

Claire Gasque

2021 Lin Fellow

Alexander Alvara

2021 Lin Fellow