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upward angle shot of Ian Cohen ’15G, right, with John Gianforte standing beside a telescope in an observatory with the dome slit open to a starry night sky

Ian Cohen ’15G, right, with John Gianforte of the UNH Observatory.

Photo credit: File photo
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His Moment
in the Sun

His Moment in the Sun

Heliophysicist Ian Cohen ’15G carries on UNH’s space physics legacy at Johns Hopkins

Ian Cohen ’15G was hardly the only kid who dreamed of becoming an astronaut. But he’s among the few now working as a rocket scientist.

Cohen, who received his Ph.D. in space physics from UNH, is the deputy chief scientist of the Space Exploration Sector at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where he’s worked since he left UNH.

Q: How did you find your spark?
A: When I was a kid, I got a telescope from my aunt and uncle for Christmas one year. I remember taking it out in my front yard on a really cold night and pointing it up and seeing the rings of Saturn for the first time with my own eyes. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I wrote down my observations in my little marble composition notebook because I was going to be a real scientist.

— Ian Cohen ’15G

He describes his role as maintaining the scientific integrity of everything the sector does, split between leading big-picture strategy — “what are the science questions that we think are the most compelling to address, and how do APL’s capabilities align with trying to address those?” — and his own scientific investigations. Those are twofold: Cohen is exploring heliophysics, the sun’s interactions with Earth, and, more recently, a future flagship mission to Uranus.

Lately, Cohen is seemingly everywhere: presenting at scientific meetings, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, meeting with policymakers, even showing up in social media videos to explain concepts like space weather. He credits his UNH advisor, research professor Marc Lessard. And he thanks Harlan Spence, director of UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, for providing mentorship, especially in the realms of advocacy and leadership that Cohen is undertaking with professional societies like the American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union.

“One of the fun things about being in the heliophysics field is UNH has such a long history in space physics, especially for such a small institution,” he says. “It’s one of the premier institutions for heliophysics, and I love being able to connect to that history and to the people who are part of it.”

— Beth Potier, director of research communications