Prof. Dr. Raluca Ilie

Raluca Ilie is Associate Professor at the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research addresses space weather and the need for predictive capabilities by developing and improving high-performance, first-principles computational models to describe and predict the hazardous conditions in the near Earth space leading to geomagnetic storms. She employs a combination of global, multi-physics, large-scale numerical models together with measurements from space borne instruments and ground based stations to study the dynamics of plasmas and electromagnetic fields in the geospace environment. These include three-dimensional global magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) magnetospheric modeling, kinetic drift physics simulations as well as data analysis and interpretation from the TWINS, Cluster, NOAA-POES, THEMIS, Van Allen Probes spacecrafts.

Combining numerical modeling with space mission data quantitatively addresses the flow of energetic particles through the magnetosphere as influenced by global fields, kinetic effects, and loss processes. This provides critical insight into the complex physics describing the Sun's effects on near Earth space in global unified way.

Raluca Ilie is at CAS during the winter semester 2026/27 upon the invitation of Young Center member Elena Kronberg.