Rate My Professor Muni Zhou

Muni Zhou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College, specializing in plasma physics. She joined the faculty in 2025 following her postdoctoral appointments as a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and as a Postdoctoral Member in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study from September 2022 to December 2024. Zhou earned her B.S. in Physics from Zhejiang University in 2016 and her Ph.D. in Nuclear Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2022, where she worked under Nuno Loureiro and received support from a Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Fellowship.

Zhou's research utilizes analytical theory and numerical simulations to explore key plasma physics problems, including magnetogenesis, plasma dynamos, and kinetic turbulence in space and astrophysical systems. Her investigations address the origin and evolution of cosmic magnetic fields through nonequilibrium microphysics of collisionless plasmas, demonstrating spontaneous field emergence under turbulent motions and their amplification to energy equipartition. She examines phase-space dynamics in kinetic turbulence, linking intermittency, intense current structures, Landau damping, and electron heating to solar wind observations. Additional foci encompass reconnection-governed decaying turbulence enabling inverse energy transfer and large-scale structure formation in environments like the solar corona and heliopause, as well as controlled nuclear fusion dynamics such as Alfvén modes in tokamaks. Notable publications include "Spontaneous magnetization of collisionless plasma" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022), "Magnetogenesis in a collisionless plasma: from Weibel instability to turbulent dynamo" (The Astrophysical Journal, 2024), "Multi-scale dynamics of magnetic flux tubes and inverse magnetic energy transfer" (Journal of Plasma Physics, 2020), "Electron heating in kinetic-Alfvén-wave turbulence" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023), and "Extended Magnetic Reconnection in Kinetic Plasma Turbulence" (Physical Review Letters, 2023). These contributions offer predictive frameworks for cosmic magnetism and plasma dissipation processes.