Dr. Wicks research covers the physics of plasma in the solar corona, solar wind, and near-Earth environment. He is an expert in the design and use of space plasma instrumentation onboard satellites and is a co-investigator of the ESA Solar Orbiter mission Solar Wind Analyser EAS instrument. He analyses data from spacecraft to investigate the processes that heat and accelerate plasma, especially turbulence and waves. He also works on space weather and risk mitigation. Dr Wicks is a keen space technologist with current projects including the development of a laser communications system for CubeSats and the proposal of future missions to the UK Space Agency and ESA for astrophysical plasma physics research.

Dr Wicks was the PI for the Debye mission proposal to the ESA F-Class mission call in 2018/19.

Find out more about the ESA Solar Orbiter mission here. If you are interested in the use of data from Solar Orbiter for scientific research, public outreach, or any other purpose, you can find the Solar Orbiter data archive here, and please ask Dr Wicks if you would like adivce on how to use the data.

You can watch Dr Wicks lecture on the topic of space weather here, if you are interested in learning more as part of an undergraduate or graduate physics degree, then take a look at the Northumbria Physics BSc, Physics with Astrophysics BSc, MPhys and PhD programme webpages.