Jonathan J. Makela Assistant Professor 316 Coordinated Science Laboratory Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 Phone: (217) 265-9470 Fax: (217) 333-4303

Jonathan J. Makela received his B.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2003) from the School of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University. After completing his Ph.D. he spent two years in the Thermospheric and Ionospheric Research and Applications group at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC as a post-doctoral research associate. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at the end of 2004 where he is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Concurrently, Jonathan is also an Assistant Research Professor at UIUC's Coordinated Science Laboratory.

Research Interests

Understanding when and why equatorial plasma instabilities develop and gaining the ability to forecast their occurrence will lead to better techniques to mitigate their effects on satellite-based navigation and communication systems. To this end, I have been working with both ground- and satellite-based instrumentation to study the seasonality of these instabilities. In addition, I am working with advanced ionospheric models, such as the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Electrodynamics Global Circulation Model (TIMEGCM) and the Assimilative Ionospheric Model (AIM). By studying these models in conjunction with data collected by various sensors, a better understanding of the underlying physics can be gained in addition to knowledge of when these models work, and when and why they fail.

Recent evidence has shown that the mid-latitude ionosphere is not immune to significant disturbances either. As a large portion of the world's population lives at mid-latitudes, understanding these irregularities is crucial, as they can have a large effect on satellite based infrastructure, such as the Global Positioning System and satellite communication systems. Our understanding of the occurrence rates, much less the underlying physics, of these disturbances is very basic in comparison to equatorial irregularities. Thus, an additional focus of my research is carrying out experiments that will lead to a better understanding of when and why mid-latitude irregularities occur.

I have significant expertise in the use of the Global Positioning System as a tool for studying the dynamics of the ionosphere. As a graduate student, I developed a technique to compare ionospheric electron contents measured by the Arecibo Incoherent Scatter Radar and a nearby GPS receiver during severe mid-latitude ionospheric storms. I worked with images obtained from the Cornell All-Sky Imager to further characterize the ionosphere during these storms. By comparing data obtained from these instruments to the outputs of assimilative models, we have come to learn that even at mid-latitudes, the ionosphere is not as "well behaved" as was previously thought.