Peter Tatum

Physicist  ·  Engineer  ·  Builder  ·  M.S. Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences, CU Boulder  ·  B.S. Engineering Physics, UC Berkeley

At the core, Peter Tatum is a builder. Before he ever set foot in a laboratory he was working with his hands — trained in welding and machining, and applying those trades to architectural fabrication, custom furniture, and sculpture in the Bay Area. He spent years turning raw steel, aluminum, and wood into things that were useful and, ideally, beautiful: collaborating with architects, designers, and artists at shops like Blank and Cables in Oakland and on independent design projects of his own.

Eventually he redirected that same instinct — to understand materials deeply and build things that work — toward physics. He earned a B.S. in Engineering Physics from UC Berkeley, working with Dr. Shannon Curry at the Space Sciences Laboratory on ion acceleration in the Martian magnetotail, then completed a Master's in Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, conducting research at the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics (LASP) under Dr. David Malaspina.

His specialization is plasma physics — specifically the kinetic physics of space plasmas. His research used observations from NASA's Parker Solar Probe to study kinetic Alfvén waves and turbulence in the near-Sun solar wind. On the instrumentation side, he designed, built, and implemented spacecraft-based hardware for in-situ measurements of electric and magnetic fields in planetary ionospheres, magnetospheres, and the solar wind — including contributing to the Rapid Active Plasma Sounder (RAPS), built to fly on the jointly led NASA/SNSA (Swedish National Space Agency) SYSTER sounding rocket. The tools changed from a MIG welder to a circuit board, but the work is the same: figure out what you want to measure, then build the thing that measures it.

Research & publications  ·  Design & fabrication  ·  Full CV