Meers Oppenheim

Oppenheim studies space plasma physics using supercomputer simulations, theory, and data. He works on a range of research topics, including ionospheric and solar collisional plasmas, particle-wave interactions, and the physics of meteor trails. Since 2016, he has been working to incorporate the important effects of ionospheric turbulence into planetary scale simulations of the coupled magnetosphere, ionosphere and atmosphere. He has also been trying to model wave heating of the solar chromosphere. Most recently, he has also been working on understanding the effects of UV photoelectrons on the ionosphere and their observational consequences.

In 1998, Oppenheim began working as an assistant professor of astronomy at Boston University. He became an associate professor in 2004, and in 2013, a full professor. In 2018, he became the director of graduate admissions at Boston University.

In 1988, Oppenheim was a research assistant at Cornell University. In 1995, he became a Max Planck Society Postdoctoral Scientist. In 1996, he became a research associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Oppenheim received his B.S. and M.Eng. in 1984 and 1990 from Cornell University's School of Applied and Engineering Physics. He then received his Ph.D. of Electrical Engineering in 1995 from Cornell's Space Plasma Physics Group.

Oppenheim began his career as a programmer and junior analyst at Jack Faucett Associates, Inc. in Chevy Chase, Maryland from 1980 to 1982. From 1984 to 1986, he worked as a staff physicist at the Physics International Corporation in San Leandro, California.

Meers Oppenheim (born 1962, Bethesda, Maryland) is a Professor of Astronomy at Boston University. His primary research interests include computational and theoretical space plasma physics, dynamics of the ionosphere and solar atmosphere, particle-wave interactions in plasmas, and the physics of meteor trails.