Associate Professor
Research Interests 
My research interests broadly focus on alien worlds: from rocky planets in our solar system to exotic gas giants orbiting distant stars. I build mathematical and computational models that help us understand the environment on these planets. As a theorist, my work is limited only by my imagination. Well, not really… The models are constrained by observations that help us characterize the physical properties and the chemical composition of the planets. Ground and space–based observations have made a tremendous progress in the last few decades providing us with valuable information to validate the theoretical models. In my research I work with data from several NASA planetary missions, Hubble Space Telescope and most recently the James Webb Space Telescope.
My work with computational models and large scale atmospheric simulations has evolved into interests in applying novel Machine Learning techniques and AI methods to astrophysical problems and large scale observational and synthetic data sets. I am exploring the limits of simulation-based inference using symbolic regression in search for new physical relations in large data sets.
A natural extension of my mathematical and statistical work is Quantum Computing. My group is focusing on novel, physics motivated quantum algorithms for implementation in well defined real world problems.
Research Groups
- Astrophysics Theory
- Institute for Fundamental Physics
Background
Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University (2000)
Contact Information
Email: matcheva@ufl.edu
Phone: (352) 392-0286
Office: 2073 NPB
Mailing address:
Department of Physics
2001 Museum Road
P.O. Box 118440
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-8440