My name is Charalambia Varnava and I am a passionate postdoctoral researcher, blending computational and applied mathematics, as well as galaxy evolution. My research has been featured in prestigious journals and garnered international recognition through press releases.
About me
I received my Ph.D. in Computing/Computer Science in January 2024 from European University Cyprus, with my thesis titled “A Bayesian method for fitting spectral energy distributions of galaxies with radiative transfer models”. Prior to my doctorate, I was recognized as the top M.Sc. student in the 2015 Applied Mathematics cohort at the University of Cyprus. My M.Sc. thesis is titled “Robust exponential convergence in a balanced norm for an hp finite element method applied to fourth order singularly perturbed problems”. I also hold a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Cyprus.
I was a recipient of several honors and awards, including a full scholarship for the Ph.D. Program of Computing/Computer Science granted by European University Cyprus, the award for the highest academic record during the Master’s degree program in Applied Mathematics granted by the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the University of Cyprus and the Sievert Larsson/Ancoria Excellence Award for the highest academic record during the Master’s degree program in Applied Mathematics granted by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Cyprus.
I participated in the research projects “Further development of CYprus models for Galaxies and their NUclear Spectra (CYGNUS+)” and “CYprus models for Galaxies and their NUclear Spectra (CYGNUS)”, both funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). I was also involved in “In-silico modelling”, an internal research program of the University of Cyprus. Additionally, I am a founding member of Women in Mathematical Sciences in Cyprus (WMSC).
My doctoral studies pioneered the development of a novel open-source tool named “SMART (Spectral energy distributions Markov chain Analysis with Radiative Transfer models)”. SMART implements a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to fit the ultraviolet to millimetre spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies exclusively with radiative transfer models. For more details, please read the article. The code is available on the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) or on GitHub.
My research interests span across several disciplines within theoretical and applied sciences, including:
- Computational mathematics
- Data mining
- Probabilistic data analysis
- MCMC model fitting
- Bayesian inference
- Differential equations
- SED fitting
- Finite element method