February 4, 2026 — Dr. Stephen Fuselier has been appointed as vice president of the Space Science Division of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). A noted heliophysicist, Fuselier recently served as the co-chair of the National Academies of Solar and Space Physics Decadal Survey. NASA uses its recommendations to identify and prioritize the scientific questions and necessary observations required to answer them over the next 10 years.
“I’m thrilled to lead SwRI’s Space Science Division,” Fuselier said. “I’ve spent much of my career at the Institute, and I have tremendous respect for everyone in the division.”
Fuselier earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Iowa in 1984 and has more than four decades of experience in the space science field where he has held multiple technical positions on an array of NASA missions.
“As one of the broadest-based scientists in heliophysics, Stephen is an excellent choice to lead the division,” said Dr. Jim Burch, senior vice president of SwRI’s Space Sector. “He has achieved transformational science results from the aurora in the upper atmosphere to the edge of the solar system including the Earth’s magnetosphere and bow shock, Saturn’s magnetosphere and comets.”
Fuselier has played a key role in numerous NASA missions focused on how the Sun and solar wind shape and define the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble around the solar system. He serves as a co-investigator on the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), sensor lead on the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission and deputy principal investigator and instrument lead on the Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS), which launched in July 2025. He is a co-investigator of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, which studies magnetic reconnection in the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Fuselier has authored or co-authored more than 610 papers and publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings. In 1995, Fuselier was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and in 2021 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences for distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Fuselier joined SwRI as a program director in 2011. He was promoted to director in 2013 and executive director in 2015. In 2024, he was named the acting vice president of the Space Science Division.
Fuselier serves as an adjoint professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio as part of the SwRI-UT San Antonio Graduate Program in Physics. In 2025, he and his wife established the Stephen Fuselier and Elizabeth Packer Endowed Scholarship at UT San Antonio for students majoring in physics or electrical engineering.
For more information, visit Space Research & Technology or contact Mike W. Thomas, +1 210 522 2255, Communications Department, Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238-5166.