Virtual Inverse Days 2020
University of Helsinki and Finnish Meteorological Institute co-organized 26th Inverse Days of the Finnish Inverse Problems Society. This year the conference was organized virtually, and the chair of the Scientific committee was Tatiana Bubba from the University of Helsinki. The conference had altogether 59 scientific talks and more than 180 registered participants.
Inverse Days is the annual scientific conference of the Finnish Inverse Problems Society (FIPS). The first Inverse Days were organized at the University of Oulu in 1995. This year the conference was organized virtually for the first time due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The conference was divided in 10 scientific session. The sessions covered both theoretical and applied inverse problems. Application areas included 3D X-ray tomography, electrical impedance tomography, forestry, uncertainty quantification and atmospheric inverse problems among others. The themes followed the themes of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Inverse Modelling and Imaging. The session number 2 was dedicated to the memory of the late Mikko Kaasalainen (born 1965, died 12 April 2020), who was a professor of mathematics at the Tampere University and an important member of the Finnish Inverse Problems Society. The conference had 25 highlight talks, 29 regular talks and five plenary talks. The plenary talks were given by Chris Johnson (U. Utah), Silvia Gazzola (U. Bath), Valery Serov (U. Oulu), Simon Pfreunschuh (Chalmers U. Tech.) and Barbara Kaltenbacher (U. Klagenfurt). Number of registered participants was all-time record: 185.
In addition to scientific program, the conference also had a special session to celebrate the 60th birthday of Prof. Erkki Somersalo, the founding president of FIPS. The birthday program included scientific talks related to Erkki Somersalo’s research and career along with more humoristic ones. Master of the ceremony was Prof. Samuli Siltanen, the current president of FIPS. For the first time, the Inverse days also had virtual lab excursions. The lab excursion included:
· X-ray Tomography Laboratory (UH), Alexander Meaney
· Spectrometers in Atmospheric Measurements (FMI), Tomi Karppinen
· Log X-ray Systems (Finnos Oy), Jere Heikkinen
· Biomed. Optical Imaging and Ultrasound Lab (UEF), Aki Pulkkinen
· Process Tomography Laboratory (UEF), Aku Seppänen
Virtual lab excursions will be also uploaded to the Inverse Problems YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqSbbWIqt9ZhWbAlJgEOGZg
Please pay extra attention to the amazing short film by Aku Seppänen!
The Inverse Days week also included a special session “Women in FIPS”, and the annual meeting of the Finnish Inverse Problems Society.
The Finnish Inverse Prize, annual award of the Finnish Inverse Problems Society, was awarded to Jesse Railo who defended his PhD thesis “Geodesic Tomography Problems on Riemannian Manifold” with distinction at the University of Jyväskylä in 2019. In addition to University of Jyväskylä, Jesse has also worked at U. Tampere, U. Helsinki and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, and is now a Postdoctoral scientist at the ETH Zürich. Congratulations Jesse!
The scientific committee of the conference was
· Tatiana Bubba (chair)
· Janne Hakkarainen
· Marko Laine
· Matti Lassas
· Samuli Siltanen
· Johanna Tamminen
Special thanks to Antti Mikkonen for his work on putting together the Virtual Lab tours, Rashmi Murthy for taking care excellently of the technical arrangements for the conference and Lauri Ylinen for his work on the website. A job well done!
“I love math” logo: Joe Volzer
Conference website: https://www.fips.fi/id2020.php
