Dr. Deshpande is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Physics at the Physical Sciences Department, ERAU. Her research interests include remote sensing, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) including Global Positioning System (GPS), space weather effects, inverse problems, big data, high-performance scientific computing, mathematical modeling and simulations, signal processing, data analysis, upper atmosphere physics and magnetosphere-ionosphere interactions.
Dr. Kshitija Deshpande completed her PhD in 2014 from the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Virginia Tech (VT). She was part of a National Science Foundation project, deploying Space Science instruments in Antarctica. She received a medal from Congress for her service at the South Pole station. She also worked at the Center for Space Science at VT from 2014 to 2016 before joining ERAU. Her area of specialization is ionospheric scintillation and electromagnetic wave propagation.
Dr. Deshpande has worked on several projects spanning her area. She has developed the most general state-of-the-art 3D model "SIGMA" to simulate GNSS high rate scintillation effects globally especially from high latitude regions, and an inverse method to study the physics of ionospheric irregularities. This work has been well appreciated by the research community. In 2016, she won her first NSF collaborative grant, "CEDAR: Fresnel scale structural properties with a scintillation auroral GPS array in the context of E and F region activity" (Period: 09/01/2017-08/31/2020) to use her forward propagation model with a cluster of GPS receivers. She also has an Embry-Riddle internal grant to continue her work with the Antarctica project.
Apart from being NASA and NSF panelist, Dr. Deshpande has served as a reviewer for distinguished journals in Space Physics and Radio Science. Dr. Deshpande has given several invited talks and seminars including one at the URSI AT-RASC meeting in 2018 in Gran Canaria, Spain. She was voted as an International URSI Individual Member(MURSI) in 2018. She was also voted as a Session Chair for NRSM-URSI for the Session G5: New Horizons in Active and Passive Radio Techniques for Geospace Remote Sensing for 2019-2020. Finally, while teaching Physics for Engineers at Embry Riddle, Dr. Deshpande is devoted to spread the enthusiasm and excitement of space science to the young minds especially by involving them in undergraduate research projects with her GNSS receivers in the Embry-Riddle Space Physics Research Lab (SPRL).
Other projects Dr. Deshpande is working on are (1) CEDAR: Fresnel scale structural properties with a scintillation auroral GPS array in the context of E and F region activity, (2) FIRST: Investigating the Ionospheric Irregularities during Substorms observed over Antarctic Plateau.
Current Student Researchers
Pralay Raj Vaggu (Fall 2018 - Present)
Pralay is a doctoral student in the Physical Sciences Department at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). He started working with Dr. Deshpande in the Fall of 2018. He is currently working on the radio wave propagation model “SIGMA” to characterize the ionospheric irregularities (specially at E and F region heights) by performing an inverse method, which are likely to produce scintillations in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals. For this purpose, he has analyzed the data from a cluster of six Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers known as “Scintillation Auroral GPS Array” (SAGA) and the data from “Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar” (PFISR).
Pralay has successfully interfaced the SIGMA model with the “Configuration Space model”, which provides the stochastic ionospheric structures that can be interpreted as the density distributions in SIGMA phase screens. His work was presented at AGU (2019) and CEDAR (2019 & 2020). He got hands-on experience in installing and setting up the Septentrio and Novatel GNSS scintillation monitoring receivers. He is actively involved in the undergraduate research projects that are carried out using the GNSS receivers located at ERAU Space Physics Research Lab (SPRL).
Nicolas Gachancipa (Summer 2017 - Present)
Nicolas is an undergraduate student doing a double major in Aerospace Engineering and Computational Mathematics, and a minor in Finance. He started working on the GNSS project with Dr. Deshpande in May 2017. During the summer, he helped set up the GPS experiment at SPRL using 2 Novatel Receivers, which are collecting data ever since. Nicolas also relocated one of these receivers temporarily for an eclipse experiment at Clemson University in August 2017. He analyzed the TEC and low rate scintillation data. His work was presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in 2017 (in New Orleans).
In 2018, he developed an algorithm to collect, process and analyze data, using Python. He attributes his success in bagging an 8-month long co-op with Rockwell Collins in 2018 to his research experience at the GNSS lab. Nicolas joined Airbus (UK) in the summer of 2019 for his second co-op experience as a future projects engineer. He returned to ERAU in August 2020, and is currently developing a machine learning algorithm (using recurrent neural networks) to detect and classify ionospheric sinctillation events.
Daniel Koshy (Fall 2019 - Present)
Daniel is an undergraduate student majoring in Aerospace Engineering. He joined SPRL as a freshman in the fall of 2019. In his time with the team, Daniel has helped assist and lead the rocket launch sector of the lab which works in finding relationships between rocket launches and ionospheric scintillation. To do this he has learned how to analyze, parse, and graph rate plots/data using Python and MATLAB codes while working in parallel with satellite receivers. He is also greatly involved in the 2020 Chile eclipse study as PI and the thunderstorms project. Daniel hopes to contribute and learn more in the coming semesters.
Marie Bals (Spring 2020 - Present)
Marie studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, where she received her B.S. and M.S. During the breaks and practical semesters, she had the chance to work in many different aerospace companies in a variety of roles, from designing Unmanned Aerospace Systems (UAS) to space mechanisms. Her curiosity and fascination for space led to a research project at Embry-Riddle in Prescott, in the field of gravitational waves. She started working on her Ph.D. with the GNSS team (in Daytona Beach) in February 2020, on how to apply machine learning techniques to GPS signal scintillations in high latitudes.
Chintan Thakrar (Summer 2019 - Present)
Chintan is a Junior majoring in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics. He joined the GNSS research group at the Space Physics Research Laboratory in 2019. Chintan has contributed by processing and analysing GNSS data using MATLAB and Python scripts. He has also contributed by processing and analysing data from higher latitude receiver’s networks like CHAIN towards a complex clustering and categorisation problem using machine learning models and statistical methods. This project has exposed Chintan to working with an exceptional team and helped him massively with his team skills.
Past Students
Lucas Tijerina (Spring 2019 - Spring 2020)
Lucas graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering (with a concentration in astronautics) and a minor in computer science. Before joining SPRL, his research focused on the design and development of a propellant storage and transfer system and data handling using MATLAB and Python. He contributed to the team by thinking of new ways to visualize the data, and by applying machine learning techniques for detection and classification of scintillation. His work was presented at the AGU Fall meeting 2019.
Julian Herrera (Summer 2017 - Fall 2019)
Julian majored in Aerospace Engineering and graduated in December 2019. He began working on the GNSS Project in the summer of 2017. In 2017, Julian created a Python code to graph sky plots, which included satellite's position and scintillation data (sigma phi and S4). In the summer of 2018, Julian focused on multipath removal and high-rate data plotting using MATLAB.
Starting Fall 2018, Julian led the Thunderstorms project trying to identify a relationship between tropospheric thunderstorms and GNSS scintillation. These projects helped Julian learn about data analysis (filtering, signal processing, big data analytics, etc). He also learned Python for the project. He has taken these various tools and applied them to other research projects. In summer 2019, Julian joined Rockwell Collins for an internship. He also worked remotely on the thunderstorm project as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow at ERAU. In January 2020, Julian joined Collins Aerospace as a Systems Engineer.
Nicole Mystrow (Summer 2018)
Nicole majored in Aerospace Engineering (Aeronautics) with a minor in applied mathematics. She began working on the GNSS Project with Dr. Deshpande in May 2018. Nicole worked on various projects focusing mainly on multi-path removal from satellite data.
This project requires the use of both Python and MATLAB codes. Aside from multi-path removal Nicole also learned how to plot low-rate data and how to utilize TeamViewer to watch receiver data collection. This work has helped Nicole improve upon her data analysis skills as well as an overall better understanding of hardware specifically antennas and receivers.
Marissa R. Priore (Spring 2019)
Marissa majored in Space Physics with two minors in Applied Meteorology and Applied Mathematics. She began working on the GNSS project in the Spring of 2019. She focused on a project to find a correlation between thunderstorms and mid-latitude scintillation data.
For this project, she assisted in calculating the trajectories of GPS satellites in relation to lightning strikes while also researching other sources of lighting and weather data to help further prove results. She also did research on how lighting affects the ionosphere. Branching off from that, Marissa got involved in predicting space weather for the team to discern days that might have scintillation caused by geomagnetic storms. Marissa's involvement in these projects and the lab as a whole gave her the chance to apply space physics in real world applications and gain a better understanding of the possible connections between lighting, the ionosphere, and geomagnetic storms. Marissa joined Harris Corporation in Summer 2019.
Daniel Nigro (Spring 2019 - Spring 2020)
Daniel graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. He supported the team by analyzing ionospheric scintillation data and supporting the installation of receivers and antennas in multiple locations (including Chile). His work was presented at the AGU Fall meeting 2019.
Devarshi Patel (Spring - Summer 2019)
Devarshi graduated in 2020 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering, and a minor in applied mathematics. He first began working on GNSS project from Spring 2018 while mainly focusing on working with CASES receiver that is located in Antarctica.
This project helped Devarshi sharpen his data analytics skills as well as coding skills in MATLAB and Python. In summer 2019, Devarshi joined Northrop Grumman as a Systems Engineering Intern, and worked with Delta Airlines as a TechOps Co-Op in Fall 2019. Devarshi graduated in 2020, and joined the Lockheed Martin Corporation full-time as a Systems Engineer.
Created by Samantha Reynolds and Nicolas Gachancipa.
Maintained by Kshitija Deshpande (deshpank@erau.edu) and Nicolas Gachancipa (gachancj@my.erau.edu)
About
News
Projects
People
Gallery
Plots and Data
