Dr. Esteban Vera, professor and researcher of the optoelectronics lab of the PUCV’s School of Electrical Engineering, and director for the Center for Adaptive Optics of Valparaíso, has received funding to launch the research project STIC-AMSUD entitled MAWSER: Machine intelligence based wavefront sensing and reconstruction for adaptive optics, project that will be able to strengthen the current international collaboration network that exists between the optoelectronics lab and our Center and the Astrophysics Laboratory of Marseille (LAM) in France, and the Industrial University of Santander (UIS), in Colombia, through the STIC international funding call. As it follows, the details of this brand new initiative:
How does the idea come to mind?
Esteban (E): Once we received the big funding, the QUIMAL, for this Center, there was a big intention to actively search for collaborators that are involved in the same topics as us. Eventually, when Dr. Pedreros visited us, who is also doing his posdoctoral research now in LAM, the contact was made to reach the team who is developing research in France in these topics. It was there when I personally propose the idea to apply for this funding, and do it together, after a talk that I made for the french research group.
What is the main goal behind this project?
E: Normally, the main goal in these type of projects is to do that, to give more strength to the link between researchers. This is no exception. And of course, to have an exchange between the collaborators and the students also. In this project in particular the idea is to develop multidisciplinary research and explore the performance of having two partners in Latin America. It has a due of three years, where the graduate students will visit Chile, Colombia and France. The research will focus on the deep understanding of the IA applications that can be used into adaptive optics issues.
Who will be part of this project? May you give us a little insight of the work schedule?
E: From Colombia we will count on the team headed by
Dr. Henry Arguello, and from France, with Dr. Benoit Neichel. Well, for
the first year, we expect to have the students from Latin America stay
at France doing research internships, so they can use this as a good
opportunity to complement their graduate studies. At the end of the
year, we expect to do a workshop here in Valparaíso. When it comes to
infrastructure, we’ll use everything that is available until now by the
associates of this project.
If you want to know more about the optoelectronics lab and our Center, check out the official website for each one.