Alexa Halford wins national award for paper
Fall 2002

Alexa Halford was awarded an Outstanding Student Paper for her featured research at the 2002 spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union’s Space and Aeronomy Section.

Senior Alexa Halford is double majoring in physics and mathematics. A McNair Scholar, Halford has conducted research in Augsburg’s Space Physics Lab for three years. This past summer she carried on her research at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, which she said was "a dream come true."

Halford’s research focuses on the latitudinal and seasonal variations of types of naturally occurring VLF radio emissions. She studies under the mentorship of Mark Engebretson, Ph.D. from the Department of Physics at Augsburg College.

Halford was awarded an Outstanding Student Paper for her featured research at the 2002 spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union’s Space and Aeronomy Section. Both undergraduate and graduate students compete for these awards.

Her winning paper presentation is titled "Latitudinal and seasonal variations of quasi-periodic and periodic-ELF-VLF emissions," and was co-authored by Halford, [Professor] Mark Engebretson, and [Augsburg physics staff] Jennifer Posch; with Andy Smith, British Antarctic Survey; and Urman Inan, Stanford University.

In her free time Halford is a competitive figure skater. Skating since she was four years old, she occasionally coaches and would like to judge competitions in the future. Halford also plays the violin, and was a member of the Augsburg Orchestra her first two years in college.