Neal Turner, Ph.D.

Neal Turner is principal scientist and supervisor of the Interstellar and Heliospheric Physics Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

He earned a BSc in physics from the University of Sydney. For his Ph.D. in astrophysics, he went to the University of California at Santa Cruz. He then did postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland in College Park and at the University of California in Santa Barbara. In 2003, he moved to JPL, where he was promoted to a research associate in 2005. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA center, operated by the California Institute of Technology.

Neal Turner's research goal is to understand the origins of planetary systems like our own. He uses numerical modeling of hydrodynamics with magnetic forces, ionisation chemistry, solid particles' movements, and radiative transfer, to explore ideas about the planet-forming processes in protostellar disks and relate them to observations of forming planetary systems across the electromagnetic spectrum and measurements from solar system probes. Current research topics include the magnetocentrifugal winds launched from protostellar disks' surfaces and the potential for disturbances in the winds to reveal young planets embedded in the disks beneath.

Neal Turner is a Visiting Fellow at CAS in October 2019 and is part of the CAS Research Group "The Ionisation Structure of Planet Forming Discs and their Atmospheres" of Prof. Dr. Barbara Ercolano. He will participate in the workshop "Planet Formation Witnesses and Probes: Transition Discs" on 18 and 19 November 2019.