Ethiopian in NASA

       Introducing an Ethiopian in NASA

From Shepherdship to a NASA Researcher: Dr. Tilaye Tadesse’s Inspiring Life Journey

                                     Compiled by Endashaw Abebe

            Dr. Tilaye Tadesse Asfaw is a NASA senior postdoctoral researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland, USA.
He was born and grew up in remote rural areas of the Eastern Hararge Zone in Ethiopia. During his childhood, he had to walk a very long distance to attend school as there was no school nearby.  Growing up he helped his farmer father by herding his family’s cattle and by helping out with several farming activities. He had never dreamed of being a solar science researcher during his elementary and high school years as he had no awareness that space can be studied. During his high school year it was noted among others that he was brilliant in science, particularly in mathematics and physics, and helped many other fellow students by tutoring. He earned some incoe from his tutoring to support himself on several school related expenses. At the end of his high school year he had acquired excellent grade that let him join the country’s higher education institution – Addis Ababa University. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Physics and Master of Science in Astrophysics in 1996 and 2005 respectively.
After awarded a scholarship to attend his PhD in Astronmy and Astophysics, he left Ethiopia for Germany to join Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research. He earned his PhD in 2011. After finishing his PhD and his postdoctoral program in Germany he found an opportunity in the USA to his senior postdoctoral role at Drexel University in a NASA granted research program. After one year at Drexel he found a new senior postdoctoral research fellow opportunity at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. He is one step closer to become full NASA scientist. He has also written several peer-reviewed publications on space weather, solar flare, solar magnetic field and many other solar related topics, which is his speciality.
In spite of all challenges in his life, he managed to explore the beauty of Solar physics and Astrophysics in general. His main research focuses on numerical modelling of magnetic field in the solar atmosphere. The magnetic field in solar atmosphere plays a key role for almost all active physical phenomena such as solar eruptions and coronal heating. Solar flares, prominence eruptions, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are tremendous explosions in the Sun’s atmosphere. It is well accepted that intense magnetic fields around sunspot regions drive those eruptions which can produce hazardous space weather conditions close to Earth. Severe space weather storms present a variety of hazards including increased radiation levels for space travelers and crew on polar air flights, the risks of disabling of GPS systems and damage to power grids, and potential large economic losses due to damage to communications satellites.
These effects motivate a need to understand and model the source regions of space weather threats at the Sun. Dr. Tilaye has developed nonlinear force-free coronal magnetic field solver, which calculates the 3-D magnetic field from the photospheric boundary into the solar atmosphere using spherical geometry. He is currently involved in developing numerical code which is going to be integrated into NASA Community Coordinated Modelling Center ( CCMC)  to predict solar eruptions for forecasting space-weather. He has a leading role in the development of a suite of tools for use in modelling the quasi-steady evolution of coronal active region magnetic fields, using data from HMI/AIA on-board the Solar Dynamics Observatory. For more info on Dr. Tilaye visit the offical NASA page.
Dr. Tilaye has been a guest on EBS TV’s  weekly ‘TechTalk With Solomon’ show on May 3, 2013 . His Video Interview is attached below.