Welcome to Matt Heavner's personal web space. I work on atmospheric electricity research and generally do physics (or try).

My best friend and partner Carrie, (the great Orca researcher) and I no longer live in a wood heated log cabin. Well, actually, we still do, but we've moved to another cabin. It does have a wood stove, but it also has oil heat--luxury!!! We are on an island in the middle of Goldstream Creek, and breakup is coming--anyone have a spare bridge? I hope to get some pictures scanned in soon to put up here. I highly recommend living in Alaska. One great thing about life up here is aurora watching. If you want to see the aurora, I recommend Tom Immel's Real Time Geophysical Data page.

I am attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks, working on my PhD in the physics department. I originally was studying Schumann Resonances. This work with Dave Sentman led to my participation in an ongoing study of sprites and jets. I am doing this work as part of the Space Physics Group at the Geophysical Institute.

I am currently planning to graduate in September of 1999, so that I will have time to focus on the planning of the New Zealand New Year's 2000 party. You are invited--just get to the Christchurch airport and you'll find directions to the party there. If you get there and are lost, call up Drew and Sally at Struan Farm Retreat outside of Geraldine (03 692 2852). I can't think of any better place to stay in New Zealand.

My efforts in graduate school are directed almost completely at my research. The research has paid off, in terms of a few publications. Recently, I presented spectral observations at the 1997 CEDAR meeting, and "Observations of Variations in Optical Sprite Spectra." at the 1997 Fall AGU meeting.

I maintain a list of grad students/friends in this crazy enterprise. Also, my dad and brother are both part of this tangled web. My sister and mom definitely need to be mentioned, but they don't have a page to link ("...that's right, the women are smarter...").