About

Prof. David B. Jess

Solar Physics

I am currently a Professor at Queen’s University Belfast, and I work within the Solar Physics research group. Previously, I was employed as the “ROSA Instrument Scientist”, and was part of the team responsible for assembling, testing and commissioning the ROSA instrument at the National Solar Observatory, Sacramento Peak, USA, back in 2008. Following on, I was an STFC Post-Doctoral Fellow (QUB; 2009-2012), a Marie Curie Fellow (KU Leuven, Belgium; 2012-2013), and an advanced STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow (QUB; 2013-2018). I was made permanent academic staff at QUB in 2013, promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2017 and Reader in 2019, before being made a full Professor in 2021.

My main studies of the Sun concern its lower atmosphere which can be seen in optical wavelengths. I am predominantly interested in how the Sun’s energy travels through its atmosphere, both in the form of flares and waves. To study this, I utilise a wide range of instruments, including the Queen’s University developed ROSA camera system, as well as the Royal Society funded Hydrogen-Alpha Rapid Dynamics camera (HARDcam), of which I am the Principal Investigator. I am also a founding member of the Waves in the Lower Solar Atmosphere (WaLSA; www.WaLSA.team) consortium, which is dedicated to promoting international collaborative research efforts linked to wave studies in the Sun’s atmosphere.

I am also the UK’s main point of contact for the upcoming Indian National Large Solar Telescope (NLST), which will be a 2m class facility in the Merak region of Northern India. As part of this role, I am the Principal Investigator of a prototype fibre-fed, near-UV hyper-spectropolarimetric imager for the NLST, which completed construction in 2022 and was successfully commissioned and science verified using the Dunn Solar Telescope in August 2022. This instrument, named the Fibre-Resolved opticAl and Near-infrared Czerny-Turner Imaging Spectropolarimeter (FRANCIS), is now available as a common-user instrument at the Dunn Solar Telescope while the NLST is under construction. I you are interested in utilising this instrument, then please contact me directly for more information.

Predictive Sports Analytics

Predictive Sports Analytics (PSA; www.predictive-sports-analytics.com) is one of the founding research groups within the AI Collaboration Centre (AICC) at Queen’s University Belfast. PSA brings together researchers and expertise from mathematics, statistics, physics, and computer science, in collaboration with sports science practitioners across soccer, rugby, cycling, athletics, and Gaelic games, in order to advance research in the predictive modelling of sports and health metrics.

We are currently working with a number of soccer teams across the NIFL Championship, NIFL Premiership, and internationally, alongside rugby squads across the UK and GAA teams throughout Ireland. PSA has numerous real-world applications stemming from its research, all of which have the ability to give athletes, coaches, and organisations a competitive edge, including:

  • Player/squad speed distribution analyses to monitor strength/conditioning improvements with time (also a useful diagnostic for identifying growth and performance trajectories in youth sport);
  • Real-time force/velocity monitoring as an indicator of in-game fatigue;
  • Time-dependent heart rate zone classifications to unveil cardiovascular fitness, enabling bespoke training regimes;
  • Longitudinal examination of acceleration intensity as a proxy for explosive strength, which correlates with heart rate variability (a useful aid to alert coaching staff to potential underlying cardiac conditions); and
  • Three-dimensional force vectorisation to uncover physics-based thresholds linked to concussion and musculoskeletal injury.

We are always happy to collaborate with clubs (from amateur ‘grass roots’ level through to elite professionals), researchers, sports scientists, and anyone with a passion for sport. Please visit the PSA webpage (www.predictive-sports-analytics.com) or reach out to me through the Contact Me page.