- What is your name, your nationality and your educational background?
- My name is Elias Roland Udnæs and I am from Lillehammer and Oslo. I have completed my masters in solar physics here at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics (ITA).
- Where have you studied and worked before and in what field?
- I started my bachelor in physics and astronomy at the University of Oslo (UiO) straight after High School. For two summers I have worked as a summer student/research assistant at RoCS, doing astrochemistry and software development. In my masters, I worked with radiative transfer. These previous projects are quite different to my current project, but I have gotten valuable skills in programming, and a solid background to build upon in my PhD.
- What is the main question of your study?
The goal of my project is to identify and quantify different physical mechanisms that heat the solar chromosphere.
- How do you plan to answer to the main question?
- The research problem is twofold. The first part deals with detecting heating mechanisms in forward modeling of the solar atmosphere, from the Bifrost code. The second part takes on the detection of heating mechanisms from observations of the sun. To combine these two parts, I have to generate synthetic spectra from the Bifrost atmospheres, linking the forward modelling with the authentic observations. With machine learning techniques like clustering, I hope to use knowledge from simulations to identify heating mechanisms in the Sun.
- What brought you to Oslo? Why ITA/ RoCS in general?
- The choice of ITA/RoCS was simple. I had the opportunity to participate in activities at RoCS already as a master student, and got to experience the great environment we have here. After completing my master, I was lucky to get the opportunity to start a PhD here.
- How can you describe your experience so far?
- I have learned a lot from my colleagues, and the activities we have here, such as retreats, journal clubs, and talks.
- What do you expect from this experience at ITA and in Oslo?
- I expect to develop the skills and get the experience that is needed to be an independent researcher. These expectations are linked to the more “official” part of taking a PhD, but I also expect to research topics that are, to me, genuinely interesting, and enjoy my time here at RoCS with all the great colleagues I have.
- What do you like to do in your spare time?
- I like to be outside, either cross-country skiing, hiking, or running.