Awesome Alum

Awesome Alum: Rhyan Sawyer

By Amber Powell

Rhyan Sawyer ’21, a physics Ph.D. alumnus and the recipient of the prestigious Outstanding Student Presentation Award from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa.

Sawyer’s interest in physics began in Kansas. “When I took physics in high school, I realized that it was essentially mathematics applied to real-world problems,” Sawyer said. “The ability to use mathematics, logic and reasoning to understand real-world phenomena intrigued me. I knew I wanted to study physics.”

UTSA’s joint program with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) space sciences division inspired Sawyer to become a Roadrunner. After graduating from Emporia State University in 2016 with a B.S. in physics, Sawyer joined UTSA’s joint doctoral program in 2018.

The joint program provides many opportunities to study applied space physics with industry experts. During his time at UTSA, Sawyer collaborated extensively with several of SwRI’s engineers and scientists. He worked on several NASA missions, including Cassini, Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) and TRICE-2. Prior to joining the research lab, he did not have any experience working with space flight hardware. The steep learning curve was daunting, but the support of staff members proved immeasurably valuable.

“I received incredible guidance from my mentors,” he said. “Each one helped me improve my skills as a researcher and provided me with the abilities I needed within the lab to successfully conduct the experiments.”

Sawyer’s research efforts earned him recognition from the AGU, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences. AGU recently presented him with the Outstanding Student Presentation Award. This prestigious award recognizes both the quality of a student’s research and the presentation, and it is only awarded to the top 2% to 5% of the student presenters in each section.

His research investigated data from a TRICE-2, a series of two sounding rockets launched from northern Norway in 2018. Each rocket payload carried an ion instrument capable of measuring the energy of incident ions. Sawyer’s research focused on a population of low-energy ions, and his presentation inferred where they may have come from as well as what interactions led to their detection.

Sawyer traveled to Andoya, Norway, and viewed the TRICE-2 launch in person. “Watching a rocket launch with the instrument that you have been working on in the lab for several months was exciting and rewarding,” he said.

UTSA set me up for success by not only teaching me about the topic of my research, but also teaching me how to conduct scientific research inside and outside of the lab. This helped me develop my skills as a researcher, which will be invaluable throughout the rest of my career.