Aman Priyadarshi Kumar, a second-year astronomy Ph.D. student at New Mexico State University, has received a NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science (FINESST) Award. This prestigious grant funds graduate student-designed and performed research projects that contribute to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Kumar’s project focuses on solar tornadoes. These massive, swirling pillars of plasma in the sun’s atmosphere can rotate at 186,000 miles per hour, whereas the most intense tornadoes on Earth hit their maximum rotational speed at about 300 miles per hour. His project, titled “Solar Tornadoes Unleashed: The Twisting Forces Behind Plasma Transport” aims to understand how these tornadoes form, evolve and transport mass and magnetic energy throughout the solar atmosphere, and what that movement means for other systems and features on the sun.