Spaceweather Group
News
1.3.2024 Welcome Michelle Galloway and Vanessa Mercea
We are happy to welcome Michelle Galloway, who joins us
as a senior research assistant to design and build a
spectrograph for flare observations, and Vanessa Mercea, who
started her PhD on investigating space weather influences on satellite orbits.
| 1.3.2024 Welcome Michelle Galloway and Vanessa Mercea | |
| We are happy to welcome Michelle Galloway, who joins us as a senior research assistant to design and build a spectrograph for flare observations, and Vanessa Mercea, who started her PhD on investigating space weather influences on satellite orbits. | |
| 20.2.2024 Successfully completed MSc theses | |
| Daniel Zahnd and Janis Witmer successfully defended their MSc theses. Daniel's thesis is titled "Investigation of the solar atmosphere using machine learning techniques" and deals with applying normalizing flows to accelerate inversions of SST observations. Janis' thesis is "A machine learning approach to investigate the evolution of sunspots" and he created a transformer model with the goal of predicting the evolution of pores into sunspots. | |
| 15.2.2024 Welcome Kenneth Jannasch | |
| We are happy to welcome Kenneth Jannasch who started his MSc thesis to investigate flares with explainable artificial intelligence. The goal of his work is to identify which spectra statistically occur before flares and why they lead to flares. | |
| 1.2.2024 Appointment of L. Kleint as an Associate Professor | |
| The Executive Board of the University of Bern has appointed Lucia Kleint as associate professor of optical astronomy on February 1, 2024. | |
| 22.12.2023 SERI-funded ERC Consolidator Grant for L. Kleint | |
| Prof. Dr. Lucia Kleint has received one of the highly coveted and competitive ERC Consolidator Grants 2022, which starts on January 1, 2024 and is now funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). This grant will also be used to build a new instrument for the observatory in Zimmerwald, which will be used to study eruptions on the Sun and stars. See the article in uniAKTUELL and a video published by the University of Bern. | |
| 15.12.2023 Welcome Dorian Paillon | |
| We are happy to welcome Dorian Paillon who started his PhD thesis on designing and building a spectrograph for flare observations. | |
| 1.9.2023 Welcome Pranjali Sharma and Moritz Meyer zu Westram | |
| We are happy to welcome Pranjali Sharma and Moritz Meyer zu Westram who started their PhD theses on machine learning applied to solar data. | |
| 24.2.2023 Welcome Daniel Zahnd and Janis Witmer | |
| We are happy to welcome Daniel Zahnd and Janis Witmer who started their MSc theses on machine learning applied to solar data. | |
| 1.7.2022 Move to the Unversity of Bern | |
| With the appointment of Prof. Lucia Kleint as the vice-director of the Zimmerwald observatory, our group moved from the University of Geneva to the University of Bern. | |
| 20.5.2022 Successful Observations at SST | |
We successfully completed 9 observing
days at the Swedish Solar Telescope in La Palma. The days were
awarded to PI Jonas Zbinden in a competitive selection of the
SOLARNET program. Observations at ground-based solar
telescopes offer unique capabilities to measure magnetic
fields of flares. A lucky coincidence also allowed us to
observe a lunar eclipse from the observatory.
| |
Images from our observations in 2022
| 15.5.2021 Welcome Jonas Zbinden | |
| We are happy to welcome Jonas Zbinden who is starting his PhD thesis on solar/stellar flares and machine learning. | |
| 10.5.2021 Congratulations Dr. Panos | |
| Congratulations to Dr. Brandon Panos for successfully defending his PhD thesis entitled "The Analysis of Solar Flares Using Machine Learning" | |
| 19.1.2021 SPD/AAS Karen Harvey prize 2021 | |
| The 2021 Karen Harvey Prize for significant contributions to the study of the Sun early in a person's professional career is awarded to Dr. Lucia Kleint. Her contributions are numerous, among them observations and modeling of turbulent magnetic fields in the quiet Sun; analysis of unprecedented high precision spectropolarimetric and spectroscopic measurements of the photosphere and chromosphere during flares; and applications of machine learning techniques to flare data. Dr. Kleint coordinated the flight software team for the Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX), now flying on Solar Orbiter. She then led the German solar telescopes on Tenerife, where she spearheaded a major redesign and upgrade of the optical system and operations of the GREGOR telescope. She now leads a research group at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. | |