Hello! My name is Eleanna Asvestari and I am an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. I get excited and intrigued by so many different research fields, but my primary love is the Sun and the space it dominates 🌞 At the moment I am working in space weather modelling and often work with the data-driven MHD model EUHFORIA, which traces the evolution of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and CME-driven shocks through realistic background solar wind conditions. My key focus is the spheromak magnetic field configuration and the physical processes that affect its evolution. The spheromak is one of the different structures employed in EUHFORIA in order to simulate CMEs as realistically as possible.
Besides doing science, I also love communicating it to the general public, which is why besides being a researcher I am also a science communicator for The Science Basement (TSB) organisation. For TSB I am a podcast host in an amazing team of early career scientists, interviewing both junior and senior researchers. I am also contributing in the “Afternoons in TSB” as well as the “Journal/book club” projects, helping with planning small talks and panel discussion sessions with the audience!
As a member of a minority “still” in academia and as someone who often experienced wellbeing issues in the academic environment I take great interest and I try to be educated on and be involved in efforts for improving inclusivity, diversity and the wellbeing. Thus, I am actively involved in the wellbeing groups of my faculty. I fall in the classical paradigm that “mainly people from within minority groups care and are advocates of the problems they face”; however, I hope that this will change soon, since the problems our colleagues face are indirectly our problems too.
