Biography

Hsinju Chen (they/she) is a PhD candidate at Heliophysics Research and Applications (HeRA) group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. They received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and M.S. degree in Communication Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2017 and 2020, respectively.

Currently, she works with Professor Raluca Ilie on studying the impact of energetic heavy ions on the magnetosphere dynamics through multi-fluid magnetohydrodynamics modeling and the use of interactive virtual reality in undergraduate electromagnetic education. Her previous works span from polarization-agile patch antenna arrays to developing modularized experiments for hands-on antenna and electromagnetic education in university classrooms. They were recently awarded the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST-21) grant (2023–2025) in the Heliophysics Division and are one of the two principle investigators of the “HUG Initiative: Research Career Roadmap for Historically Marginalized or Underrepresented Genders,” a diversity, equity, and inclusion project in the Grainger College of Engineering’s 2022 Grassroots Initiatives to Address Needs Together (GIANT) program co-funded by the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute (IIDAI) and the Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA Institute). They were also elected and currently serve as the Student Representative (2022–2024) for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) program.

Apart from research, Hsinju reads, reviews, and blogs about literature in all genres. They love theatre, traveling, creative writing, and has published one story.