About me
I’m an astrophysicist who uses theory and computational simulations to study space and astrophysical plasmas. Currently, I work as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department at the University of Chicago studying collisionless plasma shocks, cosmic ray streaming instabilities and relativistic asymmetric magnetic reconnection.
I received my PhD in Plasma Physics from the University of Delaware in December 2016. My graduate work focused on studying heating in heliospheric magnetic reconnection and kinetic plasma turbulence.

RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Galactic Cosmic Ray Acceleration and Transport
- Collisionless Plasma Shocks and Diffusive Shock Acceleration
- Magnetic Reconnection in Heliospheric and Astrophysical Systems
- Kinetic and MHD Plasma Turbulence
Select Publications
Kinetic Simulations of Cosmic-Ray-Modified Shocks II: Particle Spectra (2020)
D. Caprioli, C. C. Haggerty & P. Blasi Abstract: Diffusive shock acceleration is a prominent mechanism for producing energetic particles in space and in astrophysical systems. Such energetic particles have long been predicted to affect the hydrodynamic structure...
Kinetic Simulations of Cosmic-Ray-Modified Shocks I: Hydrodynamics (2020)
C. C. Haggerty and D. Caprioli Abstract: Collisionless plasma shocks are efficient sources of non-thermal particle acceleration in space and astrophysical systems. We use hybrid (kinetic ions – fluid electrons) simulations to examine the nonlinear feedback of the...
dHybridR: a Hybrid–Particle-in-Cell Code Including Relativistic Ion Dynamics (2019)
C. C. Haggerty and D. Caprioli Abstract: We present the first plasma simulations obtained with the code dHybridR, a hybrid particle-in-cell code with fluid electrons and kinetic relativistic ions. dHybridR is perfectly suited for all the astrophysical and...
Computational Skills
Advanced knowledge of Python, C, C++, Java and Fortran
Plasma modeling using massively parallel Particle-in-Cell, Vlasov, Hybrid and MHD codes
Simulation and observational data analysis with Python, Matlab and IDL

Collaborators
- Damiano Caprioli, University of Chicago
- Ellen G. Zweibel, University of Wisconsin Madison
- Michael Shay, University of Delaware
- James F. Drake, University of Maryland
- Bill Matthaeus, University of Delaware
- Prayash Sharma Pyakurel, University of California, Berkeley
- Tai Phan, University of California, Berkeley
- Marit Oieroset, University of California, Berkeley
- Alexandros Chasapis, University of Colorado, Boulder
- Paul Cassak, West Virginia University
- Marc Swisdak, University of Maryland