Congrats to Dr Melessew for his PhD dissertation

Yesterday evening I received excellent news from Bahir Dar University - our colleague Melessew Nigussie has defended his PhD thesis at the Physics Department of the Bahir Dar University. Melessew has been working on TEC models for East-African sector. I have not yet seen Melessew's thesis, but here's a link to one of his publications at Radio Science http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012RS004981/abstract. We have a number of joint SGO-BDU projects, hence it is really nice to hear this kind of news! Congratulations!

Melessew Nigussie and Antti Kero in EISCAT Control
Room  (Tromsø, Norway) during the Finnish
EISCAT campaign in November 2013.

Bahir Dar school - Concluding remarks

After hectic weeks in Bahir Dar, two members of the KAIRA/SGO team are now back in Finland and the rest of the group will return by the weekend. During the visit, we ran a series of lectures on applied mathematics and space physics. In addition we had splinter sessions on various topics (riometry, radar installation etc.) and discussed the curricula of mathematics and physics education in Bahir Dar University. BDU is developing fast and expanding rapidly, hence the need for curriculum revision. Our Lappeenranta and Tampere colleagues are doing similar things with a number of East-African universities and thus we have a consortium project for  these efforts. You can find our project website at  http://www.mafy.lut.fi/HEI-ICI/. This project is funded by Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Centre for International Mobility (CIMO). Funding is greatly acknowledged!

The next Bahir Dar event will be held in October 2014 http://inverse-problems.org/sps2014/. The dates are somewhat tentative. This event will be a quad-lateral effort with Ethiopian, Finnish, US and South-African colleagues. In addition, we have scheduled the second Inverse Problems Africa workshop for late 2015. It will be held in Kampala, Uganda. The International Symposium in Equatorial Aeronomy will be held in Bahir Dar around 2016. (If I remember correctly.) Thus lots of interesting events will take place in the region in the near future. Naturally we encourage all the colleagues to attend these events!

And below a large set of photos from Bahir Dar by Mikko Orispää! (Might be useful for people who are thinking to participate 2014 events!)

Bahir Dar mosque.

Market I

Market II

Market III

Kids playing.

The ultimate public transportation 'device' - the Bajaj!

Markku and Lassi walking to the University gate.

Bajaj driver and co-driver!

Workshop lunch in Lake Shore

Lunch again.

University monkey!

Bahir Dar University stadium, where the grandiose Ethiopia - Finland (4-2) football match took place.

Kids playing on the shore of Lake Tana.

Bajaj hassle!

Lads posing to the camera.

A nosy boat.

Bahir Dar avenues.

And some random flower.

Physics department.

Donkey - the local Toyota HiAce

Cooking and selling food...

Lassi before the film festival event.

And the cinema, where we watched Stanley Kubrick's film '2001: A Space Odyssey'

And yes, we did have enough room for the film audience....

Bunna mafelat - Coffee ceremony before the film.

Odours of Ethiopia...

And the coffee beans...

Bahir Dar winter school 2013

Currently, four members of the KAIRA/SGO team are in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, for the winter school 2013. The objective of the school is to design an educational module on mathematical radar theory for Bahir Dar University. SGO has a long history with BDU, including the fact that the BDU rector Baylie Damtie has done his PhD in SGO team about EISCAT data analysis.

A number of big radar and other infrastructure projects are going on in Bahir Dar. For example US Air Force will install a VHF coherent backscatter radar in January 2014. Bahir Dar is an ideal place for Equatorial studies, as it is located at the geomagnetic Equator.

More info on the school at http://inverse-problems.org/ws2013/.  School photos below by Mikko Orispää.

Lassi talking about priors.

Abiyot et al.

Computer class

Antti giving introduction to space physics.

Markku asking questions about basic signal processing theorems.

Endalkachew and Markku talking radar problems.

Group photo taken after the Ethiopia-Finland football match. Final score 4-2, all-time score 2-1 for Ethiopia.