Solar Physics - Solar Physics welcomes Marco Velli

Introducing our new Editor-in-Chief to succeed John Leibacher

2 July 2024

Publisher and editors of the journal Solar Physics welcome its new Editor-in-Chief Marco Velli. He is following in the footsteps of John Leibacher, who retired from this post after having served as an EiC from 2005–2023.

We gratefully acknowledge John Leibacher’s contributions to Solar Physics and the community as a whole.  Marco Velli is joining the Co-Editors-in-Chief Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi, Cristina H. Mandrini, and Iñigo Arregui.

Marco Velli obtained his PhD at the University of Pisa in 1985, has done postdoc research in St. Andrews and Paris, before moving to the University of Florence in 1993.  He joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech in 2004, and started his current position as a Professor of Space Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2014.

His research area has focused on space plasma physics and solar magnetic activity with particular emphasis on the stability of magnetic structures anchored in the photosphere such as coronal loops, wave propagation and shock formation in inhomogeneous and stratified plasmas, nonlinear evolution of current sheets and magnetic reconnection, the properties of turbulence in dynamically forced, open systems, and wave–particle interactions in the solar corona and heliosphere. 

Marco Velli is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, a member of the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter teams, and the NASA Heliophysics Advisory Committee. His editorial experience include topical collections in the journals Space Science Reviews (Springer) and Physics of Plasmas (AIP), and his co-authored book “Basics of Plasma Astrophysics / Fisica del Plasma” (Springer 2012/2015). Marco Velli has published more than 260 refereed articles in academic journals.