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.

SGO projects in Ethiopia

SGO is carrying out two collaboration projects in Ethiopia. We have mentioned these projects in web log previously, but maybe it is time to check out the projects in more detail.

For SGO, the most interesting thing in Ethiopia is that the geomagnetic Equator crosses Ethiopia. Hence this makes the Bahir Dar University an ideal spot for Equatorial studies. Our future plan is to both install instruments in the country (riometers, tomography receivers,...) and to make scientific collaboration with the BDU departments of mathematics and physics. The cunning plan is to educate the Ethiopian staff to carry out methodological research, which is based on rigorous mathematical modelling of geophysical measurements and to implement these methods in practice with modern measurement tools, such as software radios (USRPs) and the like.

Our Ethiopian projects are actually part of two big projects coordinated by the Department of Mathematics and Physics of Lappeenranta University of Technology. The third Finnish partner is the Department of Mathematics of Tampere University of Technology. The other African partners are from Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. The projects are:

• Mathematics education and working life relevance in East Africa 2013-2015 (funded by Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland)
• East-Africa Technomathematics 2009-2015 (funded by Centre for International Mobility of Finland)

We have a project website at http://www.mafy.lut.fi/HEI-ICI/.

Of course going to Africa has many positive aspects for Finns, such as being in a nice climate during the slushy seasons or dark period "kaamos".  Actually the Bahir Dar weather is just like best Finnish summer weather, very pleasant indeed.

Admin block at the main campus of the Bahir Dar University.

Inverse Problems Africa 2012

Just in case you are wondering, you haven't accidentally stumbled into the wrong web log. However, although KAIRA is an Arctic project, we have some other collaborations and connections with other interesting project in other parts of the world. The following is posted on behalf of Lassi Roininen, from SGO.

The Inverse Problems Africa 2012 school and conference will be held in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. These two back-to-back events will be held in October 2012. The events will cover both the theoretical and practical aspects of inverse problems in mathematics and physics with applications.

Featured topics include:

1. Statistical inversion and incoherent scatter radar. Organiser: Markku Lehtinen, Finland, University of Oulu, Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory
   

2. Epidemiology models and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Organiser: Heikki Haario, Finland, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Department of Mathematics and Physics
   

3. Stochastic differential equations and their applications to pollutant dispersion in shallow waters. Organiser: Wilson Mahera, Tanzania, University of Dar es Salaam, Department of Mathematics
   

4. Tomographic imaging. Organiser: Samuli Siltanen, Finland, University of Helsinki, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Full details about the school and conference (including details about registration and travel) can be found at http://www.inverse-problems.org/