Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

Hristopulos. There are two categories of spatial interpolationmethods: the fi rst is deterministic, assuming that every event,including natural disasters, is causally determined by an unbrokenchain of prior occurrences. The second method is stochastic, anapproach that takes into account predictable as well as randomelements. ‘The fi rst [method] is simple and easy to implementbut does not provide information about uncertainty,’ ProfessorHristopulos points out. ‘The second is powerful, but humanintervention is needed, making it necessary to employ a personwho understands geostatistics.’The SSRF method, however, provides an entirely new approachto spatial analysis. ‘This analysis can be applied to a variety ofscientifi c problems that involve fi lling data gaps, or constrainedsimulations. The power of the SSRF method stems from asophisticated blending of spatial statistical methods with statisticalphysics,’ Professor Hristopulos says.At the crossroads between disciplinesAt the Technical University of Crete in Chania, Professor Hristopulosestablished an ideal setting for the amalgamation of expertise onthe subject. Assembled were: Professor Sujit K. Ghosh, Professorin Statistics from North Carolina State University in the USA;Dr Milan Žukovič, an engineer who is now Assistant Professorat the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in the Slovak Republic;and Dr Samuel Elogne, a mathematician from the University ofToulouse, currently at the University of Alberta, Canada.‘My focus is trying to get other researchers involved, to identifypotential problems and percolate these ideas into the public sectorand to convince the scientifi c community,’ explains ProfessorHristopulos. And the Spatstat project also gave him the meansto attract signifi cant talent to Crete, an island geographicallypositioned at the edge of the EU.Attracting talented Fellows‘It is more diffi cult to do this with scientifi c projects than withothers, especially because most postdocs want to focus onresearch, rather than teaching,’ he explained. ‘With Marie Curiefunding, we were able to provide an attractive package. Itwas appealing and so drew the type of interest we wanted. Inthe seven years that I have been based in Crete, this was thebest project both in terms of collaborations and because wewere able to produce signifi cant results.’50