Rate My Professor Colin Waters

Professor Colin Waters is Professor of Physics at the University of Newcastle, Australia, affiliated with the School of Environmental and Life Sciences in the College of Engineering, Science and Environment. He obtained his PhD in space physics from the University of Newcastle in 1993, after earning a B.Ed.(Sc.) from Avondale College and a Dip.Sc.(Hons) from the University of Newcastle. His career commenced as Lecturer in Physics at Avondale College in 1987, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship with the Canadian Network for Space Research at the University of Alberta in 1993. He joined the University of Newcastle in 1994 as Lecturer, progressing to Senior Lecturer in 2003, Associate Professor in 2007, and Professor in 2015. He held a Research Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 2000, served as Head of School from 2017 to 2018, and currently directs the Centre for Space Physics. Waters has supervised approximately 20 MSc and PhD students and teaches across mathematics and physics topics from high school to postgraduate levels.

Waters' research specializes in space physics, examining plasma interactions with planetary magnetospheres and ionospheres using computational modeling, magnetometer networks, satellite data from Iridium and AMPERE constellations, and SuperDARN radars. During his PhD, he developed the cross phase technique for remote sensing near-Earth plasma mass density via ULF waves, a method now employed internationally in Canada, the UK, South Africa, Japan, Europe, and the US. His investigations cover field line resonances, Birkeland currents, plasmasphere and plasmapause dynamics, auroral electrojets, Joule heating, and geomagnetic induced currents (GICs) affecting power grids, pipelines, and satellites. Collaborations include work with the Bureau of Meteorology's Space Weather Unit, Australian Energy Market Operator on grid resilience, and the Square Kilometre Array project on ionospheric scintillation mitigation. He co-authored the book Magnetoseismology: Ground-based Remote Sensing of Earth's Magnetosphere (Wiley, 2013) with F.W. Menk and has published over 170 peer-reviewed papers, garnering more than 4,700 citations. Recent publications include The Relationship Between the Magnetometer Data Derived GIC Index and Measured GIC in High Voltage Transformers in Australia (Space Weather, 2026) and An Extreme Auroral Electrojet Spike During 2023 April 24th Storm (AGU Advances, 2024). Awards encompass the Australian Institute of Physics Prize in Physics IV (1986), Canadian Network Post-Doctoral Fellowship (1993), and Faculty of Science and Information Technology Teaching Excellence Award (2011). He serves as Associate Editor for Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics and holds memberships in the American Geophysical Union and Australian Institute of Physics.