CWI researcher Enrico Camporeale received a Vidi grant from NWO for his proposal 'Real-time forecasting of killer electrons on satellite orbits' in May 2017. He received the 800,000 euro grant to develop his own innovative line of research and to set up his own research group within the next five years. Camporeale will develop a technology to forecast space weather events that could harm satellites, power networks and communication systems; the forecast would allow to take countermeasures.
Camporeale says: "Satellites orbiting the Earth for telecommunication, logistics, and military purposes live in a hostile environment. They are often bombarded by energetic electrons from the Sun, which can damage their electronic instruments, making them temporarily or permanently inoperable, with large economic and societal consequences. The aim of this Vidi project is to advance the forecasting capability of high-energy (so-called 'killer') electrons by enhancing physics-based models with a new data-driven probabilistic framework."
This work is very interdisciplinary, touching upon Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, Statistical Inference, and Space Weather. Camporeale says: "I believe that the synergistic use of Machine Learning and physics-based modeling envisioned in this project represents today a new frontier in Space Weather research, which will enhance our prediction capabilities, and will become a mainstream approach in the near future."
Moreover, this Vidi project will complement an on-going collaboration between the CWI Multiscale Dynamics and the TAO research group at INRIA in France, focused on the use of Machine Learning for Space Weather predictions. The funding will be used to build a team consisting of a PhD student and two postdocs, supervised by Camporeale.
Vidi grants are part of the NWO Talent Scheme to encourage curiosity-driven and innovative research. NWO selects researchers based on the quality of the researcher, the innovative character of the research, the expected scientific impact of the research proposal and the possibilities for knowledge use. During this year’s Vidi round a total of 590 researchers submitted a research project for funding. Eighty-nine of them have now received grants.
More information:
- personal homepage of Enrico Camporeale
- http://mlspaceweather.org/
- https://project.inria.fr/inriacwi/projects/mdg-tao/
- the CWI Multiscale Dynamics research group, headed by Ute Ebert
