Elena Koptieva

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Education

• PhD, Theoretical physics, Dnipro National University, 2006

Biography

Born in Ukraine and raised along the stunning northern coast of Lake Baikal in Siberia, I grew up inspired by nature and the arts, cultivating a love for painting, literature, theater and mathematics. My interest in the universe took me back to Ukraine, where I started studying gravitational physics, and later to the Czech Republic, where I continued my research in black holes and cosmology. I am now a Visiting Research Specialist (Teaching and Research) in the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My work focuses on exact solutions in general relativity. This includes developing models for black holes embedded in cosmological media (cosmological black holes), studying the interplay between cosmological expansion and local gravity, perturbations of cosmological black holes, and superradiance. 

Though 14,000 kilometers from Baikal to Illinois is modest by cosmological standards, it's been a rewarding path--and it continues.

Academic Positions

• Visiting Research Specialist (Teaching and Research), Physics Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2022-2023
• Visiting Researcher, Institute of Physics and Research Centre of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Faculty of Philosophy and Science in Opava, Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic, 2016-2022
• Visiting Researcher, Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, RU, 2015-2017
• Associate Professor, Theoretical Physics Department, Dnipro National University, UA, 2006-2015
• Teaching Assistant, Physics Department, National Mining University, UA, 2003-2006

Other Professional Employment

• Patent Expert, Center of Technology Commercialization, Dnipro, UA, 2001-2003

Research Interests

• General relativity, gravitation, cosmology, exact solutions of Einstein equations, inhomogeneous cosmological models, cosmological black holes

Selected Articles in Journals

• Exact Solution for a Black Hole Embedded in a Nonstatic Dust-filled Universe. E. Kopteva, P. Jaluvkova , I. Bormotova , Z. Stuchlik.(*)(W)
• Accelerated Expansion of the Universe in the Model with Non-Uniform Pressure. E. Kopteva, I. Bormotova , M. Churilova, Z. Stuchlik. (*)(W)
• Virial theorem for a cloud of stars obtained from Jeans equations with the second correlation moments. Stupka A. A., Kopteva E. M., Saliuk M. A., Bormotova I. M.  (*)(W)

Other Scholarly Activities

• Co-organizer and chairwoman of the Physics and Mathematics Interdisciplinary Seminar, Dnipro, Ukraine, 2009-2012
• Co-organizer of Astrophysics, Gravitation, and Cosmology Seminar, Physics UIUC, Champaign-Urbana, IL, USA. 2024-2025.