Funded by a PRIMA grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, our goal is to develop and use modern machine learning techniques to efficiently analyze astronomical data. With the receipt of a SERI-funded ERC consolidator grant, the group also works on developing astronomical instrumentation, on understanding how active regions on the Sun evolve, and on the energetics of flares. We aim to investigate the physics of flares, which are the most powerful eruptions in our solar system.
Our main research questions are
- When and where will a flare occur?
- How is flare energy transported throughout the solar atmosphere? What are the energetics of flares and how is their energy converted?
- What are the origins and mechanisms of stellar “superflares”, which are thousands of times more powerful than the strongest recorded solar flares?
- On which spatial and temporal scales do flare processes operate?
