| Professor Valentina V Zharkova |
|
BIOGRAPHY
A Leader of the Space Science group
CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Solar feature recognition from solar images obtained from various space and
ground-based observations (SOHO/MDI/EIT, Meudon, BBSO, NSO) Solar Feature Catalogues
* Region-based automated feature recognition techniques for sunspots, active
regions, filaments and magnetic field inversion lines
* Feature recognition with Artificial Neural Networks
* Creation of Solar Feature Catalogues (relational database)
* Feature classification and clusterisation with ANN and Bayesian methods
* Machine learning algorithms for feature appearances and the solar
activity forecast
- Energy release and transport in flaring events on the Sun and laboratory
plasmas (funded by EPSRC and STFC(former PPARC)) Kinetic project :
* Particle acceleration and precipitation in the atmospheres with density gradients RHESSI nugget on the return current effect
* Plasma instabilities and wave generation in dynamic events
* Dynamic processes in flaring events (hydrodynamics)
* Non-thermal excitation and ionisation emission in flaring events
* Emission impact polarisation
- Data mining and machine learning applications:
* Sunspot groups and active region classification with supervised and
unsupervised learning algorithms;
* Solar activity models based on a feature mining with Solar Feature
Catalogues;
* Solar activity prediction with the Monte-Carlo Markov Chain, Artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector Machine methods
* Web mining methods and software development
GRANTS:
Future plans
- Feature classification using machine learning methods and development of
solar activity models;
- Implementation of automated feature recognition codes into the software for
the future satellite missions;
- Investigation of particle acceleration and precipitation in flaring atmospheres with density gradients;
- Visiting grants for the scientists in plasma physics (solar and magnetospheric plasmas).
Applications submitted and currently under consideration
STFC (PPARC):
* 'Proton and electron acceleration in flaring atmosphere',started in October 2007
STFC:
* 'Proton and electron kinetics and dynamics in flaring atmospheres' - under review.
EPSRC:
* Software for automated active region classification and flare alerting with Bayesian decision tree technique, submitted Sept 2007, not funded March 2008
The Royal Society
Joint international grant - collaborative grant with SibIZMIR, Irkutsk, Russia (Prof. Altyntsev) (under review)
Current, and significant recent, funded projects
January 2008 - The Royal Society grant for incoming visit (April '08)on 'Investigation of simultaneous microwave and X-ray emission in solar flares' to work with Dr. A.Kuzentsov (SibIZMIR, Irkutsk, Russia)
March 2007 - awarded a STFC (former PPARC) grant 'Proton and electron acceleration in flaring atmosphere', 167,805.23, 2 years, 1 PRDA post new STFC grant
February 2007 - The Royal Society grant for incoming visit on 'Diagnostics of electron and proton beams from the chromospheric emission' to work with Dr. L.Kashapova (SibIZMIR, Irkutsk, Russia)
December 2007 - The Royal Society grant for incoming visit on 'Particle acceleration and collective electric field effects' to work with Dr. A. Agapitov (Space Science Division, National Kyiv University, Ukraine)
August 2006 - The Royal Society outcoming visit to Purple Mountain Observatory/Beijing Observatory, Nanjing University, China. Attendance of the COSPAR meeting with 7 oral talks
COSPAR 2006
March 2006 - The Royal Society conference grant to attend the SCOSTEP meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with 3 talks (1 oral, 2 posters);
January 2006 - The Royal Society incoming visiting grants (2) to work on non-thermal effects in hydrogen emission from solar flares (Drs L. Kashapova (Russia) and S. Chornogor (Ukraine))
* September 2005 - present - a participant of the COST-724 coordinative action, 'Speace Weather and Solar Activity Forecast', a member of Team 1 'Solar Activity and Space Weather'
* September 2004 - The Royal Society travel grant - to Chair a special session
at the Knowledge-based Engineering Systems (KES2004), Wellington, New Zealand,
1163.00
* December 2003 - The EPSRC travel grant to enable the Solar Imaging Group to
gain funding for the EU IST Framework 6 program to extend the solar feature
recognition to their classification and forecast, duration 18 months
13.4K)
Solar Quake
Memberships: International Astronomical Union (since 1991),
European Physics Society (since 1992),
Royal Astronomical Society (since 1999)
Royal Mathematical Society (since 2001)
Member of the Programme Committee (SOC) of the International conference on Knowledge-based Engineering Systems 2006 KES 2006
Member of the review panel for proposals submitted to the
Heliophysics Division's Living With a Star (LWS) Targeted Research and
Technology (TR&T) Program, NASA, USA.
Member of the Editorial Board of the international journals 'Knowledge-based Engineering systems (KES)' (2006); "Intelligent Decision Technologies, IOS Press, The Netherlands, 2007.
Reviewer of the research proposals to the STFC, EPSRC, INTAS and the Royal Society (UK) and to the Research Academies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland
1. AGU 2008, session SH05 Particle Acceleration and Transport in the Sun and interplanetary space
(conveners S. Krucker, V.Zharkova, N. Vilmer and P. Petkaki) for the Joint Assembly, 27-30 May 2008, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (Invited talk)
2. 7th IGPP/SSL International Conference in Astrophysics, Kuaua, Hawaii, March 7-13 2008 (invited talk) 7th IGPP Conference,
3. EGU General Assembly, Vienna, Austria, 16-20 April 2008 (2 contributed talks)
4. AGU 2007, special session SH08 'Particle Acceleration and its variation with the solar cycle' (conveners V.Zharkova and N. Vilmer ) for the Joint Assembly, 23-28 May 2007, in Acapulco, Mexico
5. The member of Scientific Organising Committee for KES2006 , Organising a special session on solar feature recognition KES 2006, October 2006, Bournemouth, UK
6. A member of the Scientific Organising Committee (co-Chair) of the first Workshop Solar Image Recognition, 23-24 October 03, Royal Belgium Observatory, Brussels, Belgium
7. The Chair of the session Intelligent feature recognition in astrophysical and medical images, The 8th International Conference Knowledge-based Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES2004), 20-27 September 2004, Wellington Institute of Technology, New Zealand (see report on KES2004)
8. The second Workshop Solar Image Processing, 3-5 November 04, Holiday Inn, Annapolis, USA, a member of the Scientific Organising Committee.
Collaboration:
1. SibIZMIR, Department of Radiophysics, Irkutsk, Russia (Prof. A. Altynstev, Drs. V.Grechnev, L.Kashapova, A. Kuznetsov and N.Mehsalkina
2. Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, Physics Department, Space Science Division (Dr. O. Agapitov)
3. SOHO/MDI team, HEPL, Stanford University, California, USA (Dr. Kosovichev, Dr. T. Hoeksema, Dr. R. Bogart) on the automated feature recognition and imaging of dynamic events
4. LESIA, Paris-Meudon Observatory, France (Dr. J.Aboudarham and N.Fuller)- development automated feature recognition techniques and implementation of Solar Feature Catalogues
5. MSSL, UCL (UK), RAL (UK), Meudon Observatory (France), Turin Obsevatory (Italy), Goddard Space Flight Centre (USA), National Astronomical Observatory (NAO, USA) on the EGSO project including a grid technology for the unified catalogues, a pattern recognition techniques for solar feature detection from solar images, design of sub-catalogues classified by the recognised features.
European Grid of Solar Observations
6. Plasma Astrophysics Department, Katholikeke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (Prof. M.Goossens and Dr. Yu.M.Voitenko)
7. School of Computational Sciences, George Mason University, USA (Dr. A. Poland) - solar feature recognition and grid technologies.
8. Department of Mathematics, Monash University, Australia (Dr. A. Donea and team); Boulder Research Association, US (Dr. C.Lindsey) - collaboration in solar quakes
Attended more then 130 International Meetings with contributed and invited presentations
1. Dr. T.Siverskyi, PDRA, plasma kinetic project funded by STFC
Past research staff (2002-2005):
1. Dr. A. Benkhalil - PRDA, EGSO project
2. Dr. S.I Zharkov - PRDA, EGSO project
3. Mr. M.Gordovskyy - RA, plasma kinetics project
Visiting staff:
1. Dr. A. Agapitov
2. Dr. L. Kashapova
3. Dr. A. Kuznetsov
started in July 2007.
2. Mr.A.Ammari, full time, PhD project 'Web mining algorithms with artificial intelligence', started in 2005
3. Mrs. Sarab F Majed, a PhD project in 'Solar activity forecast with SVM approach (UAE, started in July 2006
3. Mr. Mohammed Abt, Pattern recognition in solar images with SVM and AI methods, started in Nov 2006.
4. Mr. A. Chowdhury, Final year project (FEP), Update of SFC website with new searches and flash, 2007-08.
5. A.Ferguson, FEP,Learning addition to SFC web pages, 2007-08.
6. V. Adamkavicius, Linux-based networks for a small or medium enterpise, 2007-08.
Successfully completed:
1. M.Gordovskyy, PhD project " Proton versus electron kinetics in flaring atmospheres', Cybernetics Department, Bradford University, UK - defended the viva 13/12/05, got job at Sheffield University
2. Mr.Yang Lan, MSc project 'Sunspot group classification and solar activity forecast with unsupervised learning algoritms'.
