Dr Timo Laitinen

Timo’s research concentrates on heliophysics, in particular solar energetic particles (SEPs) accelerated at the Sun during solar eruptions. These energetic, ionising electrons and ions constitute a serious hazard to our endeavours in space, both to astronauts and satellites, as well as at Earth, when they penetrate the atmosphere and increase radiation dose of high-latitude flight crews. In addition, the damage to satellites due to SEPs can affect telecommunication and logistics at all walks of life. The SEPs thus represent an important part of the Space Weather phenomena, which is included as one of the highest priority natural hazards in the UK National Risk Register. Timo started his career in the PI team of the SEP detector ERNE, onboard SOHO spacecraft, and his first work on research revolved on data and instrument observation analysis and calibration, as well as scientific analysis of the ERNE observations. For his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree work, he concentrated on the theoretical aspects of SEPS: how they are accelerated in solar eruptions, and how they propagate from the Sun to the Earth. These problems have been at the heart of his research ever since, first in Finland and in Germany, then at UCLan. At UCLan, Timo has worked in several STFC-funded projects, led by Prof. Silvia Dalla. Timo’s most recent work has concentrated on the spread of SEPs in the heliosphere before being observed by spaceborne instruments in near-Earth space. His discovery that the often-used diffusion-based models for the SEP propagation are invalid early during an SEP event and that the SEPs can quickly access a wide range of heliospheric locations along meandering field lines was recently highlighted in a NASA press release. Timo has led and participated in several projects over the years. In Finland, Timo obtained a 3-year Academy of Finland project grant within as the co-PI (Principal investigator) of a Helsinki/Turku consortium “Energetic Particles and Turbulence in Coronal and Heliospheric Plasmas”. He also led several Finnish-German collaboration projects as the Finnish PI. At UCLan, Timo is the UCLan PI of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories-led ESA-funded investigation of using potential observations at Lagrange point L5 to improve space weather forecasting. He is also a member of the Science Overview Committee for Lagrange mission, a UK-led mission for a new spacecraft that aims to improve space weather forecasting using an observatory at L5 point. In addition, he was recently granted a 2-year large computing project at the STFC’s DiRAC supercomputer system, and he has been a member of several research teams funded by the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) at Bern, Switzerland.