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Project Leaders
Dr. Michael Fogle
Dr. Fogle received his BS and MS degrees in Physics from East Carolina University, Greenville, NC. He then went on to receive his PhD in Physics from Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden in 2004. He was a post-doctoral researcher in the Physics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2004-2008. He joined the Physics faculty at Auburn University in 2008 as an Assistant Professor. He is currently an Associate Professor at Auburn. His primary research interests are in atomic, molecular, and optical physics where he focuses on the interaction of electrons with atomic and molecular systems. The National Science Foundation (NSF) primarily funds this work. Dr. Fogle also collaborates with several groups, both domestically and internationally, in this research area.
Dr. Fogle joined the Auburn University Student Space Program in 2014 while helping to develop the TRYAD project proposal, ultimately funded by NSF, and now serves as co-director along side Dr. Wersinger.
Dr. Fogle is also heading up the development of a novel Earth remote sensing instrument, the Hyperspectral Instrument for Cubesats (HYSPIC). A prototype of this system is currently being developed with Intramural funds from Auburn University with the aim to fly a test mission onboard a Cubesat in the near future.
Dr. J-M Wersinger
Dr. J-M Wersinger received his PhD in physics at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute in 1977; he then went to Cornell University in 1977 as a post-doctoral researcher in theoretical plasma physics and non-linear dynamics. In 1979, he was hired as a faculty member in the physics department at Auburn University where he taught for 32 years. While maintaining his professorship at Auburn University, he took the position of a NASA Space Grant Faculty Fellow in 1994 and worked for NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC on outreach, education, and research programs until 2010. Based on his experience at NASA and with a desire to create a meaningful workforce development program, Dr. Wersinger started the Auburn University Student Space Program in 2001. Over the years, the AUSSP has launched 15 high altitude ballooning missions and on October 28, 2011 it launched its first CubeSat, AubieSat-1.
In 2015, AUSSP together with researchers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville obtained a National Science Foundation grant to develop a CubeSat mission to collect data on Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes. In Spring 2015, Dr. Fogle and Dr. Wersinger obtained an internal Auburn University grant to develop a hyper spectral sensor that could be carried by CubeSats to perform Earth observations from space.
In 2010, Dr. Wersinger received the Frank J. Malina International Astronautics Medal at the Astronautical Federation Spring Meeting in Prague, Czech Republic. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to space education by an educator who promotes the study of astronautics and space science.