Certified from

- Egyptian Meteorological Authority (nwp.gov.eg)

- World Meteorological Organization Regional Training Center/Cairo

- Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation

- Space Weather Monitoring Center Helwan, Egypt

The Journey 

The Space Weather Summer School is an annual training held in Egypt that draws attention from aspiring students from all over the world. In order to attend, applicants must submit their resumes, backgrounds, and aspirations. I was in my second year of college when I applied and was accepted into the ionosphere subgroup. Our mission was to measure the error in Global Positioning System (GPS) signals when a solar wind hits the ionosphere layer of the earth, causing it to become more ionized and intense than the normal air. We studied past records of solar winds to be able to predict the rate of diffraction for GPS signals in such cases. For my part, I was in charge of the coding using MATLAB.

My colleague and I, Ahmed Karrar, had a great idea while I worked as a software engineer. We collected data from satellites for days before, during, and after the occurrence of a solar wave. This process was challenging because the satellite system was outdated and there was no way to batch download the data for certain days.

Karrar then proposed the idea of creating a software bot to do the data collection automatically. We discussed this concept, and I developed it, using Visual Basic .NET as a desktop application. This application took certain days as input and, after downloading the data from the site, would save it in a predefined format that Matlab could read easily.

During my time at the summer school, I had the privilege of learning Matlab and various aspects of physics and astronomy. Working in a team environment allowed me to hone my cooperative skills and build a strong network of connections, many of whom are now working in the Egyptian Space Agency and as professor’s assistants. My mentor was also kind enough to challenge me to write a paper about my project, a task that was surprisingly rewarding.