Hi.That's me.
André Csillaghy

Head of the Institute of 4D Technologies (i4Ds)
School of Engineering
University of Applied Sciences North Western Switzerland (FHNW)

Steinackerstrasse 5
CH-5210 Windisch, Switzerland


Phone:+41-56-462-4062
Fax:+41-56-462-4482
email andre dot csillaghy at fhnw dot ch

Last update 2010-06-09 6:13 AM

Check here for the Information Generation course.

Shortcut: Check here for the RHESSI software.


Teaching

Spring Semester 2010

Autumn Semester 2009

 

Calendar


Projects

Phoenix-3

We are involved in the design and implementation of the new data transfer and analysis infrastructure for the solar radiotelescopes of the Institute of Astronomy at ETH Zurich. It includes three parts: an automatic transfer system, a web tool for browsing quicklook data, (DIRAC), and a dynamic environment for science analysis, included in solarsoft, the most widely used data analysis package for solar science.

Check my page summarizing the information on this project.

HELIO

HELIO is a large Virtual Observatory project funded by the European Union. The goal is to federate European data and metadata services in the heliophysics area, in order to allow (1) an integrated access to heliophysics resources in Europe and around the world; (2) provide new science added value by making cross-instrument, cross catalogs complex queries; and (3) provide a (distributed) data base for data mining in these data sets, allowing a new approach of the data explotation in this domain. This project is in collaboration with many European and U.S. partners and builds up on the EGSO legacy. It is coordinated with the NASA U.S. HDMC effort, as well as Lockheed's Helio-Informatics project.

Mass Image Processing in large Data Archives

We design and develop a framework for processing very large (or continuous) streams of images. The framework will allow easy integration of data analysis modules, in particular image processing algorithms. It allows ranking of interesting images in a list in a very similar way google presents information. We are testing this method on data from the french-italian THEMIS instrument, archived at BASS2000, as well as on the SUMER data on board the NASA/ESA SOHO spacecraft, (which, by the way, we use as testbed for future SDO data). This project is in collaboration with LESIA in Paris.

Check out this presentation for more information.

In this context, we will organize the next solar image processing workshop in Switzerland September 12-16, 2010, in Les Diablerets.

VSO Augmentation

This project will enhance the scientific utility of NASA's Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) by providing desktop software tools. Presently, the VSO provides a Web-based utility for finding data sets using metadata search parameters.  The result of the search is a set of links for downloading the data files.  In order to use the downloaded files, the user must have knowledge about each specific data set and the software needed to read, correct, display, and compare the data.

We develop desktop tools that merge the existing search and retrieval architecture behind the current Web interface to the VSO with analysis and display modules that will facilitate comparing data from different instruments and from theoretical predictions.  These tools will be based on modules that we have already developed for the joint analysis of solar observations. The resulting capabilities of the effort will allow scientists to find and use VSO data more easily and efficiently without worrying about the detailed technical aspects of the individual instruments.

This is a collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Check the latest poster from AGU 2008.

ESA's Herschel and its HIFI instrument

Herschel is a spacecraft for the study of galaxy evolution. It observes domains of the far infrared electromagnetic spectrum that have never been explored before. The Swiss software development effort within the HIFI ICC includes design and implementation of packages of the Herschel Common Science System (HCSS) and the data analysis of the HIFI instrument. We are in charge of the HIFI generic pipeline branch (which prcesses instrument data to make the data interpretable by scientists), the Herschel spectral tools, a set of data analysis algorithms usable with HIFI, PACS and SPIRE, allowing cross-instrument data analysis, and the Herschel documentation framework.

This is a collaboration with many partners, check the Herschel website for more details.

Check the latest poster from ADASS 2008.

NASA's Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager and its Data and Software Center

RHESSI is a spacecraft lauched in 2002 for observing the sun in the hard x-ray and gamma ray spectrum. I am involved in the architecture, design, and implementation of the data analysis system. I develop the utility classes and the framework of the overall system.

Please visit my RHESSI page for more information.

Scientific Visualisation in Virtual Reality Studios

This project focused on the visualization of scientific data in 3D space.

Check the first and second movies for an idea about how it works (files are big!).

Grids and Virtual Monitors

The European Grid of Solar Observations (EGSO), an IST project. In this project, our group designed and developed of the consumer system, and co-managed of the overall software development. We are currently working on the continuation of this project


General information

Research focus:

Information integration and data analysis systems for large scientific data collections

Memberships:

Swiss Association for Research in Information Technology
IEEE Computer Society
Swiss Society for Astronomy and Astrophysics
Swiss Virtual Institute of Solar Science
Action Specifique Observatoire Virtuel France (Scientific Committee Member)
International Astronomical Unions Div II: Working group on Solar Data Access
American Geophysical Union

Selected items:

Csillaghy, A., Etesi, L.I., Zarro, D.M., Tolbert, K.A., Dennis, B.R., Schwartz, R.A., Extending the Virtual Solar Observatory to Incorporate Data Analysis Capabilities, poster (pdf) at the American Geophysical Union Meeting, December 2008

Csillaghy, A., Soldati, M., Kunz, P., Bentley, R.D.,  Scholl, I., Accessing the EGSO Grid through a WSRF-Enabled API, Proc. ADASS XV, 2006 (pdf).

Schwartz, R. A.; Csillaghy, A.; Tolbert, A. K.; Hurford, G. J.; McTiernan, J.; Zarro, D., 2002, RHESSI Data Analysis Software: Rationale and Methods, Solar Physics, v. 210, Issue 1, p. 165-191 (pdf).

Csillaghy, A., Zarro, D.M., Freeland, S., Steps Towards a Virtual Solar Observatory, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 18, No 2, pp41-48, 2001 (pdf).

Csillaghy, A., Hinterberger, H., and Benz, A.O., Content-Based Image Retrieval in Astronomy, Information Retrieval, 3, pp 229-241, Springer ed., 2000  (pdf).

more publications ...

Vita:

Grew up in Carouge (Geneva), Switzerland
Diploma in Software Engineering at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, 1991
PhD in technical sciences from the Department of Computer Science also at ETH, 1997
Computer Scientist in the RHESSI project at the Space Sciences Laboratory in UC Berkeley, 1998-2001
Faculty member at UAS Northwestern Switzerland, 2001-present


Other activities:

Music: Trumpet, playing in the University's Bigband.
Gardening, cooking, beer brewing, hiking, reading, ...
Science Advisor at fingertip, science outreach with interactive exhibits

That's it for now!