Dr. Canfield is a Research Professor in the Physics Department of Montana State University, where he carries out solar physics research with graduate and undergraduate students and fellow research scientists. He is a Co-Investigator on the ISAS/NASA Yohkoh mission and the NASA High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) mission.
Dr. Canfield has contributed to the theory of radiation from astrophysical atmospheres and applied it to the Sun, stars, and active galactic nuclei. His work on solar flares has led to improved understanding of the the origins and dynamics of the hot flare plasma. His work on magnetic fields has led to better understanding of how observations of the outer solar atmosphere can be used to probe the nature of convective motions beneath the solar surface. His current interest in coronal magnetic fields has revealed two phenomena associated with regions that are the sources of Coronal Mass Ejections, namely X-ray sigmoids and H-alpha blue-shift events.
Dr. Canfield is a graduate of the University of Michigan (B.S. 1959, M.S. 1961) in Astronomy and the University of Colorado (Ph.D. 1968) in Astrogeophysics. He is author or co-author over 175 papers and books in the scientific literature and over 50 invited presentations. He has taught introductory courses in astronomy for non-science majors and theoretical stellar atmospheres and radiative transfer for graduate students. He has mentored 22 Ph.D. and Postgraduate Students now working in universities, industrial laboratories, and federally funded research and development centers throughout the United States. He has served on numerous scientific advisory committees for NASA, NSF, National Solar Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, scientific publishers, and international scientific meetings.
Other material is at http://solar.physics.montana.edu