By Annalise Ray

After years of developing expertise in space weather forecasting and weather modeling, Dr. Talwinder Singh has joined Georgia State University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

His career studying space science and solar physics began with a five-year integrated master’s degree in engineering physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi. During his time as a student at BHU, he held several internships abroad and in India. He eventually completed another master’s degree and achieved a Ph.D. in Space Sciences at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

Dr. Singh’s recent arrival at Georgia State presents a new phase in his career, where he is looking forward to teaching, in addition to conducting research. He will start teaching in the spring 2025 semester, with a course on classical mechanics.

“The thing that I most enjoy about teaching is how students always have a unique perspective about things,” he explained. “Sometimes, it forces you to think about a problem from a totally different viewpoint.”

In his research, Dr. Singh focuses on space weather – a field that examines the conditions in space created by solar activity. To characterize these impacts, he employs simulations using modern tools and available data to forecast coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares. His approach combines magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models with machine learning techniques and aims to improve the accuracy of space weather predictions.

Dr. Singh has also completed extensive professional work outside of academia. During his experience at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, he focused on improving CME model accuracy. He also simulated CMEs and their subsequent shock waves during his internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and at his internship at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, he worked on the application of GPS data to detect and classify solar flares. These experiences led him to embrace modern research approaches – drawing on machine mearning and data science to categorize space weather and develop an understanding of the impacts of solar activity on Earth.

New to GSU, Dr. Singh continues mentoring students from UAH to work on improving the characterization of solar wind and CMEs. He is also actively seeking to bring new graduate students under his wing at GSU and provide them with opportunities to research space weather forecasting and solar physics.

He’s currently working on a project called HelioCubed, a public code designed for MHD simulations of the inner heliosphere with cubed sphere geometry and parallelization on CPUs and graphics processing units (GPUs).

Dr. Singh shared that his favorite research project so far has been his most recent collaborative publication, “Improving the Arrival Time Estimates of Coronal Mass Ejections by Using Magnetohydrodynamic Ensemble Modeling, Heliospheric Imager Data, and Machine Learning.”

This publication, he explained, “showed that it is possible to improve the arrival time of CMEs using MHD simulations together with Machine Learning.”

Despite his short time at GSU, Dr. Singh recalls his faculty interview day as one of his most memorable so far.

“The day I visited GSU for my faculty job interview is the most memorable until now. I was nervous, but also excited to see where I’ll take my career next,” he revealed.

Dr. Singh’s field expertise and extensive research experience make him a valuable addition to Georgia State University, on track to inspire his students to explore complex scientific studies.