Curriculum Vitae:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Name: Leonid Petrov
Academic Title: PhD, 1995
Date of birth: October 23, 1965
Place of birth: Leningrad, Soviet Union.
Citizenship: USA
Education: Graduated from the astronomical department of
the faculty of mathematics and mechanics
Leningrad State University in 1988.
Ph.D. degree and dissertation: Institute of Applied Astronomy, Russian Academy
of Science, St.Petersburg, Russia, 1995.
Dissertation: "The methods of determination of
geodynamical parameters using VLBI".
Present position: Staff scientist of
ADNET Systems, Inc./
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
Main scientific interests: radioastronomy, astrometry, geophysics,
data analysis.
Language ability: Russian -- native language;
English -- fluent;
German -- able to speak and to read;
Employment History:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sep. 1983 - Jul. 1988 Student of the astronomical department of the faculty
of mathematics and mechanics of Leningrad State
University.
Oct. 1988 - Oct. 1996 Assistant, junior scientific researcher, scientific
researcher, Institute of Applied Astronomy of Russian
Academy of Science, St.Petersburg, Russia.
Nov. 1996 - Jun. 1997 Visiting researcher, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA,
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
Jun. 1997 - Apr. 2000 Scientific researcher (Wissenschaftlicher Mitartbeiter),
Geodetic Institute of the University of Bonn, Germany.
Sep. 2005 - Mar. 2006 Visiting professor of the
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in Mizusawa.
Apr. 2000 - Jul. 2008 Staff scientist, NVI, Inc./NASA Goddard Space Flight Center<,
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
Nov. 2008 - Aug. 2018 Senior Scientiic software developer/analyst
ADNET Systems, Inc./NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
Sep. 2018 - present VLBI Lead Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
Brief description of scientific activity:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After graduation from the university in 1988 I was engaged in the project of
development of the national astro-space coordinate and time service of the
Soviet Union. I was performing research in the area of measuring positions
of the fundamental geodetic stations by methods of radioastronomy with the
highest precision. I have mastered technology of very long baseline
radiointerferometry (VLBI) technology from designing experiments to
interpretation of results and have developed from scratches software for
analysis of geodetic VLBI observations for applications in astrometry
and geodynamics.
During my work under that project and further during my stay in Geodetic
Institute of Bonn and in NASA Goddard Space Flight Center I have developed
an expertise in advanced methods of data analysis as well as in adjacent
fields: astrophysics, fundamental physics, geodesy, oceanography, atmospheric
science. I have a wide experience in programming: development of system of
very large size, development of compilers, programming at low level, real-time
applications. I wrote over 1,000,000 lines of code for various scientific
applications.
Currently, my sphere of responsibilities covers a wide range of problems
related to 1) design, implementation and maintenance of the procedure for
a routine data analysis of VLBI measurements and timely delivery of the
products. One of the products is the series of the Earth Orientation Parameters
which are delivered to the International Earth
Rotation Service for distribution among various customers.
2) Improvements of the methods of data analysis of radiointerferometric
observations, investigation of systematic errors and development of methods
for alleviation of their influence on results. 3) Scientific interpretation
of the results. I am also providing consulting, maintenance and upgrade of
the analysis software package Calc/Solve for the international geodetic
community.
I made a determination of Love numbers from radio interferometric data,
investigated the long-term stability of geodetic VLBI measurements, determined
empirical model of nutation and precession, derived accurate estimates
of the tectonic motion of the VLBI stations, made the most complete catalogues
of positions of compact radiosources, developed the procedure for computation
of various mass loading and their quantitative validation using space geodesy
observations. Results are published in over 40 journal referred papers.
Main scientific results:
1) I have discovered that opctial jets of milliarcsecond scales
are ubiquitous and are the main reason of Gaia positions offsets
with respect to VLBI.
2) I have directly detected for the first time crust deformations caused
by polar tide.
3) I have succeeded for the first time in detecting horizontal site
displacements caused by atmospheric pressure loading.
4) I have discovered over 14000 compact radio sources with structure at
milliarcsecond level and determined their precise positions.
List of the most important publications:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. L. Petrov, "The empirical Earth rotation model from VLBI observations",
Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 467, p. 359, 2007
2. L. Petrov, J.-P. Boy, "Study of the atmospheric pressure loading signal
in VLBI observations", J. Geophys. Res.,
10.1029/2003JB002500, vol. 109, No. B03405, 2004.
3. L. Petrov, C. Ma, "Study of harmonic site position variations determined
by VLBI", J. Geophys. Res., vol. 108, No. B4, 2190,
doi: 10.1029/2002JB001801, 2003.
4. Petrov, L., Kovalev, Y.Y., Plavin, A. V., "A quantitative analysis of
systematic differences in positions and proper motions
of Gaia DR2 with respect to VLBI", 2019, MNRAS, 482(3), 3023-3031.
2019.02.17 Leonid Petrov
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