Paul J. Wright

Bio

In January 2021, I decided to leave academia and the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue new opportunities. I am a currently a Senior ML Scientist in a small startup.

Prior to 2021, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at Stanford University and a Core Mentor at the NASA Frontier Development Lab. My academic research interests were (and still are) in the application of machine learning in space science. Feel free to check out my current projects.

Before arriving at Stanford, I completed my PhD at the University of Glasgow under the supervision of Dr Iain G. Hannah. My PhD research concentrated on one of the unsolved problems in Heliophysics—the coronal heating problem. During my PhD, I gained expertise in numerous time-series analysis techniques and methods for recovering the differential emission measure (an ill-posed inverse problem) from a wide range of spectroscopic and narrowband data. I am a member of the NuSTAR heliophysics working group, and I led the analysis of the first solar flare observed by the NuSTAR hard X-ray astrophysics imaging spectrometer.

Google Cloud recently developed a website and produced videos on our work at the Frontier Development Lab (FDL). Click the image below to navigate to the Google microsite!

News

01/2021

In January 2021, I left Stanford to pursue new opportunities

11/2020

Started my own consultancy: Wright AI Ltd

09/2020

aiapy is now citeable! available at Zenodo

08/2020

Attended the Helio Hackweek 2020; worked on aiapy

07/2020

Google Cloud released two videos of NASA FDL 2019 work! available here and here

07/2020

Attended SciPy 2020

05/2020

Accepted to participate in Helio Hackweek 2020 (August 20th - 27th)

04/2020

Attended the PyAstro 2020 Hack Day and worked on sunkit-dem: see github repo!

01/2020

Joined Orion (AI) Labs

12/2019

Attended NeurIPS 2019

12/2019

Presented at AGU Fall Meeting 2019

11/2019

FDL Results Featured by NASA: available here

11/2019

Two Deep Learning Papers Accepted to Workshops at NeurIPS 2019 (Vancouver, Canada)

10/2019

Intel AI blog post of our FDL 2019 challenge: available here

10/2019

New Deep Learning Paper Published by Science Advances: see the press coverage here

09/2019

Presented at the 1st Machine Learning in Heliophysics (ML-Helio) Conference

08/2019

Super-resolution Magnetogram team win the Collaborative Spirit award at NASA FDL

06/2019

FDL 2019 kicked off: An 8-week applied AI accelerator hosted at SETI in Mountain View, CA

04/2019

Machine Learning dataset prepared from the SDO Mission available here

04/2019

Awarded PhD; Thesis title: Energetics of small solar flares and brightenings

Publications

Complete list of publications on NASA ADS.

Guiding Heliophysics Toward an Enhanced Transdisciplinary Framework

Jenny L. Verniero, James Juno, V . M. Sadykov, Paul J. Wright, Sam J. Schonfeld, Ben L. Alterman

Heliophysics 2050 Workshop, 2020

Workshop Website

Toward A Sustainable Software Development Model for Heliophysics

Will T. Barnes, James Juno, Jeffrey W. Reep, Jack Ireland, Paul J. Wright, Sarah A. Spitzer, B. L. Alterman, David Stansby, Emily Lichko

Heliophysics 2050 Workshop, 2020

Workshop Website

Science Platforms for Heliophysics Data Analysis

Monica G. Bobra, Will T. Barnes, Mark C. M. Cheung, Laura A. Hayes, Jack Ireland, Miho Janvier, Michael Kirk, James P. Mason, Stuart J. Mumford, Paul J. Wright

Heliophysics 2050 Workshop, 2020

Preprint Workshop Website

Single-Frame Super-Resolution of Solar Magnetograms: Investigating Physics-Based Metrics & Losses

Anna Jungbluth^†, Xavier Gitiaux^†, Shane Maloney^†, Carl Shneider^†, Paul J. Wright, Alfredo Kalaitzis, Michel Deudon, Atılım Güneş Baydin, Yarin Gal, Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo

In Second Workshop on Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences (NeurIPS 2019), Vancouver, Canada

Preprint Workshop Website

Probabilistic Super-Resolution of Solar Magnetograms: Generating Many Explanations and Measuring Uncertainties

Xavier Gitiaux^†, Shane Maloney^†, Anna Jungbluth^†, Carl Shneider^†, Paul J. Wright, Alfredo Kalaitzis, Michel Deudon, Atılım Güneş Baydin, Yarin Gal, Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo

In Fourth Workshop on Bayesian Deep Learning (NeurIPS 2019), Vancouver, Canada

Preprint Workshop Website

^† Researchers at NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) 2019 (Mentored/Advised)

A Deep Learning Virtual Instrument for Monitoring Extreme UV Solar Spectral Irradiance

Alexandre Szenicer^‡, David F. Fouhey, Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo, Paul J. Wright^‡, Rajat Thomas^‡, Richard Galvez^‡, Meng Jin, Mark C. M. Cheung

Science Advances, 2019

Paper Code Blog post

Machine Learning Dataset Prepared From the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory Mission

Richard Galvez^‡, David F. Fouhey, Meng Jin, Alexandre Szenicer^‡, Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo, Mark C. M. Cheung, Paul J. Wright^‡, Monica G. Bobra, Yang Liu, James Mason, Rajat Thomas^‡

Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 2019

Paper Data

DeepEM: A Deep Learning Approach for DEM Inversion

Paul J. Wright^‡, Mark C. M. Cheung, Rajat Thomas^‡, Richard Galvez^‡, Alexandre Szenicer^‡, Meng Jin, Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo, David Fouhey

Helio-ML eBook, 2018

Blog post Python Notebook

^‡ Researchers at NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) 2018

First NuSTAR Limits on Quiet Sun Hard X-Ray Transient Events

Andrew J. Marsh, David M. Smith, Lindsay Glesener, Iain G. Hannah, Brian W. Grefenstette, Amir Caspi, Säm Krucker, Hugh S. Hudson, Kristin K. Madsen, Stephen M. White, Matej Kuhar, Paul J. Wright, Steven E. Boggs, Finn E. Christensen, William W. Craig, Charles J. Hailey, Fiona A. Harrison, Daniel Stern, William W. Zhang

Astrophysical Journal, 2017

Paper

Observations of Reconnection Flows in a Flare on the Solar Disk

Juntao Wang, Paulo J. A. Simões, Natasha L. S. Jeffrey, Lyndsay Fletcher, Paul J. Wright, Iain G. Hannah

The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2017

Paper

Microflare Heating of a Solar Active Region Observed with NuSTAR, Hinode/XRT, and SDO/AIA

Paul J. Wright, Iain G. Hannah, Brian W. Grefenstette, Lindsay Glesener, Säm Krucker, Hugh S. Hudson, David M. Smith, Andrew J. Marsh, Stephen M. White, Matej Kuhar

The Astrophysical Journal, 2017

Paper Poster UKSP Nugget Blog post

Evidence of Significant Energy Input in the Late Phase of a Solar Flare from NuSTAR X-Ray Observations

Matej Kuhar, Säm Krucker, Iain G. Hannah, Lindsay Glesener, Pascal Saint-Hilaire, Brian W. Grefenstette, Hugh S. Hudson, Stephen M. White, David M. Smith, Andrew J. Marsh, Paul J. Wright, Steven E. Boggs, Finn E. Christensen, William W. Craig, Charles J. Hailey, Fiona A. Harrison, Daniel Stern, William W. Zhang

The Astrophysical Journal, 2017

Paper

Résumé

DIAS Apr '23 - present

Scientific ML Engineering
SpaceML Jan '21 - present

Steering Team Member
Small Startup Jan '21 - Jan '23

Senior ML Scientist
Wright AI Ltd May '19 - present

Applied ML Consultant
NASA Frontier Development Lab May '19 - June '21

Core Mentor / Team Lead
Super-resolution Magnetograms
Stanford University May '19 - Jan '21

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (HMI)
W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Lab.
University of Glasgow Oct '14 - Apr '19

PhD Student
Physics & Astrophysics
NASA Frontier Development Lab Jun - Aug '18

Machine Learning Researcher (Intern)
Space Weather Team
NASA GSFC Apr - May '16

Visiting Researcher
Goddard Space Flight Center
SAO/Harvard University Aug '13 - Jun '14

Research Scholar
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Dudley House, Harvard University
University of Southampton Oct '10 - Jul '14

MPhys Student
Physics & Astrophysics with a Year Abroad
First Class Honours (US GPA: 3.92/4.0)