Dr. Poppe is currently an Associate Research Scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. Andrew works in the Planetary Science group on a variety of space-related research projects. One of his main research areas is the analysis and modeling of ARTEMIS observations of lunar-plasma interactions, specifically the lunar wake, lunar exospheric pick-up ions, lunar magnetic anomalies, and the near-surface lunar photoelectron sheath. Andrew also works in the field of interplanetary dust dynamics, and specifically focuses on dust populations, dynamics, and fluxes in the outer solar system. As a graduate student, Andrew worked on the New Horizons Student Dust Counter, which is an instrument that measures the density of interplanetary dust grains in the outer solar system. Using data collected both before and after the Pluto system fly-by in 2015, Andrew has compared these measurements to dynamical models of how dust grains behave in the outer solar system, where a variety of forces (for example, gravity from the outer planets) perturbs the orbits of these dust grains. Andrew also investigates the influx of these grains into the atmospheres and onto the moons and rings of the outer planets, and how this influx might affect the outer planets.

Andrew’s Ph.D. research was done at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado at Boulder under the direction of Prof. Mihaly Horanyi, where he studied dusty plasma physics throughout the solar system. His Ph.D. thesis was specifically on the dusty plasma environment present immediately above the surface of Earth’s Moon. Andrew built computer models of the plasma environment on the Moon and considered how this might influence the dynamics of micron-sized dust grains present from the lunar regolith.