The research group "Spaceweather" is led by Prof. Dr. Lucia
Kleint and is part of the Astronomical Institute of the
University of Bern. It started in 2020 as a research group on "Understanding Solar
and Stellar Flares with Machine Learning" at the computer science
department of the University of Geneva and moved to Bern in July 2022.
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?