The 2020 Atlantic cyclone season shattered historical records for the number of tropical/subtropical storms in a single year and the highest number of storms since 1916 to make landfall. These storms are becoming stronger, more frequent, and with greater rainfall than ever before, leading to higher loss of life and economic damage. Like Earth, space is a place of potentially violent storms, transferring energy from the solar wind into disturbances in our planet's atmosphere and space environment. These storms have the potential to cause disruptions and failures of networked systems around the world.

In this discussion moderated by Eric Michielssen, hear from Tuija Pulkkinen and Chris Ruf about the coming global storms and what Michigan Engineering is doing to better help warn and protect people against their risks.

This is a zoom presentation.
Registration link: https://umich.formstack.com/forms/clasp_2_5_21_rsvp_form

Meet the speakers:

Eric Michielssen received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering (Magna Cum Laude) from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He currently serves as the Associate Dean for Research where he provides support for the College of Engineering’s research enterprise. In addition to this role, he served as the University’s Associate Vice President for Advanced Research Computing from 2013 to 2018. In this role, he helped develop several new degree programs in computational and data science and brought together faculty from disparate disciplines to tackle interdisciplinary problems using advanced computational methods.

Tuija Pulkkinen received her Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from the University of Helsinki in Finland. She is currently the Professor and Chair of the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan. She has worked previously as Dean and Vice President for Research and Innovation at Aalto University and as Research Professor at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Prof. Pulkkinen’s research interests focus on the plasma physics of the Sun-Earth system, including numerical simulations and the development of methods that help improve space weather forecasts.

Chris Ruf received a B.A. degree in physics from Reed College and a Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts. He is currently the Frederick Bartman Collegiate Professor of Climate and Space Science at the University of Michigan. He has worked previously at Intel Corporation, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Penn State University. Prof. Ruf’s research interests include remote sensing methods, atmospheric, oceanographic and terrestrial applications, and sensor technology development. He is currently Principal Investigator of the NASA Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission.

Please join us!