A/Prof. Mike Wheatland
Sydney Institute for Astronomy
School of Physics
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Email: michael.wheatland@sydney.edu.au
Tel: +61 2 9351 5965
Fax: +61 2 9351 7726


Teaching, research and administration
Mike's research interests include solar flares and solar flare statistics, solar activity in general, coronal magnetic fields, solar-terrestrial relations, and Bayesian probability. An up-to-date list of Mike's publications is located here, and the overheads for a number of recent talks are available here.

Mike has developed methods for calculating nonlinear force-free magnetic fields, which provide models for fields in the solar corona.

Mike also investigates solar flare statistics, and applies novel Bayesian methods in this context. His recent study of a remarkable series of flares produced by a small sunspot region in Oct-Nov 2009 revealed an apparent departure from an established statistical rule of flare occurrence. An image at right shows the region, and provides a link to a page with details of media stories on the result.

Mike established the Computational Science (COSC) major at the University of Sydney, an interdisciplinary major available to students across a range of degree programs teaching the application of computers to science problems. The School of Physics offers units in COSC at Junior and Senior levels.

Mike is the academic in charge of IT in the School of Physics.

Additional links
Theoretical Physics group in the School of Physics
Research opportunities - Third year, Hons., & Ph.D. projects (updated June 2009)
Publications
Solar links
COSC major at the University of Sydney
Local IT support pages
silica - The Science and Engineering HPC Facility
Animated MRI scans - an exercise in visualization
A DIY Linux cluster in the School of Physics
The double pendulum
Double square pendulum - a model for the pendulum in the SoP corridor
Solar flare prediction - a statistical method for flare prediction


Active region 11029 (ESA/NASA).


Double square pendulum


Page maintained by michael.wheatland@sydney.edu.au Page last updated Sunday, 07-Feb-2010 09:22:39 EST