Dr Sarah Bentley

Assistant Professor

School: Engineering, Physics and Mathematics

I graduated from Durham University with an MMath in 2013. After about in a year in industry working on a geometry system which underlies computer aided design software, I began a PhD at the University of Reading in 2015. As part of the space weather group inside the Meteorology depatrment, the focus of this work was to understand and predict the driving of magnetosphere-scale ULF waves by the solar wind in order to use in space weather models. I stayed on at Reading as a post-doctoral researcher in order to further this work and in 2020 joined Northumbria as a Vice-Chancellor's Fellow. In addition to continuing the various directions of my research, this provides me with the opportunity to develop my teaching and research proposal writing skills.

Due to my mixed backgrounds in space physics, meteorology, maths and geometry, I have a wide range of interests. I am still interested in the prediction of ULF waves and the resulting radial diffusion in Earth's radiation belts. However, I am also investigating a variety of techniques drawn from other fields, such as machine learning/artificial intelligence, optimisation and stochastic/probabilistic approaches to this problem, and how geometric structures combined with data assimilation can be used to efficiently model geomagnetic phenomena that underpin the co-ordinate systems used in space weather prediction.

For more information about me and my work, please visit my personal page. On this site you will also be able to find current PhD opportunities and more about how I supervise students.

Email Sarah

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Diffusion Coefficients for Resonant Relativistic Wave-Particle Interactions Using the PIRAN Code, Allanson, O., Kappas, T., Tyrrell, J., Cunningham, G., Brown, M., Garcia, A., Watt, C., Chakraborty, S., Ratliff, D., Rae, J., Bentley, S., Elvidge, S., Themens, D. Mar 2026, In: Earth and Space Science
How does the definition of a geomagnetic storm affect the contents of the resulting storm list?, Patrick, A., Coxon, J., Bentley, S., Walach, M., Murphy, K., Rae, I., Lockley, I. May 2026, In: Space Weather
Identifying Typical Relativistic Electron Pitch Angle Distributions: Evolution During Geomagnetic Storms, Killey, S., Rae, J., Smith, A., Bentley, S., Watt, C., Chakraborty, S., Ozeke, L., Walach, M., Sandhu, J., Rasinskaite, D. 16 Feb 2025, In: Geophysical Research Letters
Occurrence Rates and Variability of Whistler-Mode Waves in the Plasma Trough, Watt, C., Meredith, N., Wong, J., Murphy, K., Rae, I., Chakraborty, S., Bentley, S., Allanson, O., Rodger, C. Oct 2025, In: Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Severe Space Weather Impacts on UK Critical National Infrastructure, Allcock, M., Pidgeon, A., Black , G., Prestwood, E., Frayling, A., Cucaro, S., Lecky, W., Coxon, J., Smith, A., Bentley, S., Watt, C., Wicks, R., Rae, J. 1 Jan 2025
Automatic Encoding of Unlabeled Two Dimensional Data Enabling Similarity Searches: Electron Diffusion Regions and Auroral Arcs, Smith, A., Rae, J., Stawarz, J., Sun, W., Bentley, S., Koul, A. Jan 2024, In: Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Dataset: Ensemble results comparing L-dependent radial diffusion, Bentley, S. 13 Aug 2024
rad-diff-POP: Code to read in the data from the paper: "Two methods to analyse radial diffusion ensembles: the peril of space- and time- dependent diffusion", Bentley, S., Stout, J., Thompson, R. 17 Aug 2024
Space Weather Forecasts of Ground Level Space Weather in the UK: Evaluating Performance and Limitations, Smith, A., Rae, J., Forsyth, C., Coxon, J., Walach, M., Lao, C., Bloomfield, D., Reddy, S., Coughlan, M., Keesee, A., Bentley, S. 12 Nov 2024, In: Space Weather
Two methods to analyse radial diffusion ensembles: the peril of space- and time- dependent diffusion, Bentley, S., Stout, J., Thompson, R., Ratliff, D., Watt, C. 4 Sep 2024

Current and Recent Projects

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
STFC Consolidated Grant for the Solar and Space Physics Group at Northumbria University, McLaughlin, J. (Principal Investigator), Bentley, S. (Co Investigator), Science and Technologies Facilities Council, 01/04/23 - 31/03/26, £1,289,803.00

PGR Supervision

Kendra Gilmore Characterising Earth's Magnetic Field with Graph Neural Networks Start Date: 01/10/2022 End Date: 17/10/2025
Kendra Gilmore Spatio-Temporal Forecasting of the Auroral Latitude Ground Magnetic Field Start Date: 01/10/2022

Qualifications