Dr Graham Kerr

PhD Student

I have now completed my PhD, which was supervised by Prof Lyndsay Fletcher, and am about to start a postdoctoral fellowship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (~April 2017).

My research interests are in solar physics, particularly in energy and radiation transport through the solar atmosphere during solar flares. I have expertise in data analysis using both imaging and spectroscopic observations from the Hinode, IRIS and SDO spacecraft, as well as using the numerical codes RADYN and RH to simulate solar flares, and the radiation they produce. I am eager to use a combination of both observations and numerical simulations to better understand the processes involved in solar flares.

Publications

“Simulations of the  Mg II k  and Ca II 8542 lines from an Alfvén Wave-heated flare chromosphere”, G.S. Kerr, L. Fletcher, A.J.B. Russell, & J.C. Allred. The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 827 (2), 2016. [doi] 

“IRIS Observations of the Mg II h & k Lines During a Solar Flare”, G.S. Kerr, P.J.A. Simões, J. Qiu & L. Fletcher. Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 582 (A50), 2015. [doi]

“The Radiated Energy Budget of Chromospheric Plasma in a Major Solar Flare Deduced from Multi-Wavelength Observations”, R.O. Milligan, G.S. Kerr, B.R. Dennis, H.S. Hudson, L. Fletcher, J.C. Allred, P.C. Chamberlin, J. Ireland, M. Mathioudakis, & F.P. Keenan. The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 793 (2), 2014. [doi]

“Physical Properties of White-Light Sources in the 2011 Feb 15 Solar Flare”, G.S. Kerr & L. Fletcher. The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 783 (2), 2014. [doi] 

“Hard X-ray and Ultraviolet Observations of the 2005 January 15 Two Ribbon Flare”, J. Cheng, G.S Kerr, & J. Qiu. The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 744 (1), 2012. [doi]

Conference Proceedings

“Observations and modelling of Helium lines in solar flares”, P.J.A. Simões, L. Fletcher, N. Labrosse, & G.S. Kerr. In: Coimbra Solar Physics Meeting 2015: Ground-based Solar Observations in the Space Instrumentation Era. ASP Conference Series, Vol. 504, 2016.

A C.V can be found here.

I am active in public outreach, and throughout the 2015-2016 academic year I worked with St. Vincent’s Primary School in East Kilbride as part of the Rolls-Royce Science Prize. Our team was awarded second place with a project that was focused on the ‘Earth in Space’. To learn more about our entry click here.

Room 604
School of Physics and Astronomy
Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ
Scotland

Email: Graham.s.kerr@nasa.gov

Tel: +44 141 330 2960