Academic Lecture
Dr. Mark Butala

Wednesday March 28th, 2018 at 10.00AM
Room 215, Xindian Building, Yuquan Campus

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Intro：Dr. Butala earned his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2010 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He then joined the technical staff at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. His contributions have been recognized with NASA Group Achievement Awards including for outstanding achievement in the operation and successful execution of the Curiosity rover's mission of exploration to the surface of Gale Crater on Mars. In September 2017 joined the faculty at the Zhejiang University International Campus within the joint institute with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Abstract：The accelerating volume of information generated from ever less expensive sensing and processing technology is transforming all disciplines concerned with empirical determination. The space science community, with its ever expanding fleet of spacecraft and ground instrumentation, is now positioned to take advantage of the big data“ revolution. In this seminar, I describe how data assimilation, the systematic Bayesian inference of a high-dimensional state given a huge data volume and physical constraints on system dynamics, yields a deeper scientific characterization for the potentially destructive space weather phenomena facing our increasingly technological society. Attention is given both to the underlying Bayesian foundations and computational concerns.