Dr. Maria E. Usanova is a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder. She graduated with honors from the Department of Physics, Moscow State University (Russia) and received her PhD in space physics from the University of Alberta (Canada). Her research interests include the dynamics of energetic particles in the Earth’s radiation belts and ring current, mechanisms for particle acceleration and loss in the magnetosphere, inner magnetosphere coupling, and wave-particle interactions.