Rate My Professor Jonathan Squire

Jonathan Squire is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and a Rutherford Discovery Research Fellow. A Dunedin native, he earned his BSc (Hons) from the University of Otago in 2009, followed by an MA in 2012 and PhD in 2015 from Princeton University under advisor Amitava Bhattacharjee. His thesis received the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award from the APS Division of Plasma Physics in 2017. From 2015 to 2018, he was a Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech's Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics. Since 2018 at Otago, he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2024.

Squire's research focuses on plasma astrophysics and fluid dynamics, particularly cosmic turbulence, microinstabilities, helicity barrier-mediated coronal heating, collisionless plasma dynamics, Alfvénic switchbacks, turbulent heating in low-β plasmas, and dust instabilities. He leads the Astro Plasmas and Fluids group, employing analytic theory, simulations, and code development to investigate astrophysical systems like the solar corona/wind, accretion disks, planet formation, interstellar medium, and cosmic rays. Notable awards include the Thomas H. Stix Award (APS DPP, 2022), Outstanding Early-Career Researcher (Otago Division of Sciences, 2022), Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (2018), International Fulbright S&T Fellowship (2010-2013), and Princeton's Prince of Wales Prize (2009). Select publications: "Turbulent Heating in Collisionless Low-β Plasmas: Imbalance, Landau Damping, and Electron–Ion Energy Partition" (ApJ 2025), "Stochastic Heating in the Sub-Alfvénic Solar Wind" (PRL under review 2025), "A two-fluid solar-wind model with intermittent Alfvénic turbulence" (J. Plasma Phys. 2025), "Dust Battery: A Novel Mechanism for Seed Magnetic Field Generation in the Early Universe" (ApJ 2025), "FORGE’d in FIRE II: The Formation of Magnetically-Dominated Quasar Accretion Disks" (Open J. Astrophys. 2024), "In-situ Switchback Formation in the Expanding Solar Wind" (ApJL 2020). His work elucidates key plasma processes shaping astrophysical phenomena.