Mr. Riley Troyer moved from Fairbanks, Alaska, to the University of Iowa to study the northern lights (aurora) for his PhD. In addition to research, he is heavily involved with science policy and communication.

In undergrad, he spent a summer working on Capitol Hill for US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. More recently, Riley help create and is currently the president of Connecting Science to Society, the University of Iowa's student org for science policy and communication. He also dabbles in citizen science and helped organize a citizen aurora watching campaign for the Loss Through Auroral Microburst Pulsations (LAMP) sounding rocket mission.

In 2020, Riley was awarded a NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant to support his Ph. D. studies at the University of Iowa.