IRAP scientific team

Vincent Génot (Project Scientist and Executive Director of CDPP). After the defence of his PhD thesis at the University of Versailles (1999), Vincent joined the "Space Plasma" team of Queen Mary, University of London. Along his activity in numerical simulation, he takes part in the data analysis of missions like AMPTE and CLUSTER. His research deals with particle acceleration in magnetosphere, transport processes in the magnetosheath, and the study of the electrostatic effects on the measurement of particle instruments. Assistant-Astronomer at IRAP since 2003, he is, within the CDPP, in charge of the Value Added Services. In particular he actively participated to the definition and integration of AMDA, the flagship tool of CDPP for multi-missions multi-databases data analysis. He was designated as the Project Scientist and Executive Director of CDPP on June, 14, 2012

Baptiste Cecconi (Research Scientist). He obtained his PhD at the Paris VII University in 2004. He developed calibration tools as well as goniopolarimetric tools to analyze the radio data acquired by the Cassini/RPWS/HFR experiment. He spent one year as a post-doc at the University of Iowa, PI laboratory for Cassini/RPWS. With CNES post-doc fellowship and then recruited as an Assistant-Astronomer (since september 2007), he is working at LESIA (Observatoire de Paris) on the Cassini/RPWS/HFR and STEREO/Waves data. He is in charged of the archiving of these data sets at CDPP. He is the Waves and Radio expert within the CDPP team.

Nicolas Andre (Research scientist). He obtained his PhD in 2003. He worked at Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Toulouse on the theoretical modelling of the key processes acting in the magnetospheres of giant planets and was a member of the Cassini magnetometer team led by Imperial College. He then joined the Cassini Magnetosphere and Plasma Science InterDisciplinary Study Team at IRAP (2003-2005) where he participated to the development of the MAPSKP database. In 2006 he worked 5 months at MSSL where he joined the Cassini spectrometer team, before to spend 2.5 years at ESA (2006-2008) participating to the definition of the Laplace mission to Jupiter. He got a position of CNRS Research staff at IRAP in 2009. Nicolas is in charge of planetology aspects at CDPP.

Benoit Lavraud (Research scientist). He worked at the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements (IRAP) in Toulouse, where he obtained his PhD from the University of Toulouse. He was then hired in February 2004 as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he became staff member in August 2006. Since January 2008, he holds a permanent CNRS research position at IRAP in Toulouse. His research interests are focussed on the study of the structure and dynamics of the Earth's magnetosphere, the Sun, solar wind and their interactions. He is or was involved in various space missions: Cluster, Double-Star, STEREO, geosynchronous spacecraft and Solar Orbiter. Benoit is in charge of heliosphysics and space weather aspects for CDPP.

Alexis Rouillard (Research scientist). He worked at the University of Southampton, where he obtained his PhD in 2006. He then worked as postdoc and research associate at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, University of Southampton and George Mason University/NRL (USA). He was hired at IRAP where he started as a permanent CNRS researcher in February 2012. His primary research area is solar and heliospheric physics: cosmic rays, long-term solar cycle variations, solar imaging and in situ observations of solar wind transients (CMEs, CIRs). He is involved on the STEREO, Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus space missions. Alexis is in charge of heliosphysics and space weather aspects for CDPP.

Carine Briand (Assistant astronomer LESIA department of Paris Observatory). She started studying the photospheric and magnetospheric magnetic structures of the Sun from observational point of view and radiative transfert modelisations. From 1996 to 2003, she was support astronomer at the French-Italian THEMIS telescope (Tenerife, Spain). Since 2004, she works on the analysis of electrotatic waves observed in the solar wind with the waveform analyzer of the radio instruments on board of STEREO and WIND missions. This observational aspect is completed by Vlasov-Ampère simulations to understand the generation of electrostatic waves in collisionless plasma.

Frédéric Pitout obtained a PhD in space physics at Uppsala University in 2002 after having studied the magnetospheric cusp and its ionospheric footprint. He then worked with the analysis of Cluster data as a postdoctoral research fellow successively at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, The Netherlands and at the Max Planck institute for extraterrestrial physics in Garching, Germany. He joined the Laboratory for Planetology in Grenoble, France in 2007, and eventually IRAP in 2010 where he has been working as an assistant astronomer. His research interests focus on solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling though the response of the polar ionosphere, which he studies by means of incoherent radar observations and numerical modelling.

Previous directors of CDPP

Christian Jacquey (Project Scientist and Executive Director of CDPP). He obtained his PhD at Paul Sabatier University in 1992, was post-doc (1993/1994) at Applied Physics Laboratory (John Hopkins University, Laurel, MD, USA) and got a position of assistant professor at Paul Sabatier University, IUT-A in 1994. Christian is a specialist of multi-point and multi-instrument studies (ISEE/IMP-8, ISTP, CLUSTER). He was designated as the Project Scientist and Executive Director of CDPP on June, 2, 2005.

Christopher Harvey : After obtaining his PhD in 1968 from the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge (UK), he joined the Paris-Meudon Observatory. His experience as PI of wave experiments on the ISEE 1 & 2 satellites, and Co-I of experiments on the Voyager, Ulysses, TSS, Cluster and Cassini missions, convinced him of the need for better tools to preserve, access and exchange data and information.  From 1986 he presided the Steering Committee of European Space Physics Analysis Network.  He participated in the Phase A study of the ESA pilot project ESIS (European Space Information System), and from 1988 to 1991 he presided the ESIS Steering Committee.  From 1992 he led a French "Archiving and Processing" study, which recommended creation of the CDPP.  He subsequently presided the CDPP Phase A study team (1995), then the Project Development Group (1996).  In 1998 he moved to IRAP to become CDPP Project Scientist.  He is presently a Directeur de Recherche Emérite of CNRS.

IRAP technical team

Michel Gangloff  is a qualified computer scientist who graduated from INSA (French national institute of applied sciences) in Lyon in 1977. He has been an engineer at the CNRS since 1978, and began his career at the Dynamic Meteorology Laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau as a member of the team responsible for developing digital simulation models of the climate. He joined the IRAP in 1988, where he became involved in the management of EISCAT data. From 1992 to 1996, he was responsible for development of the MIMI onboard software for the CASSINI mission. Since 1996, he has been technical manager of the CDPP Scientific Activity Component.

CNES technical team

Bruno Besson : As an engineer in CNES since 1989, he worked as an operation and project manager on several satellite missions (Inmarsat, Sirius, STENTOR….); in 2003, he took the head of the CNES EGNOS Center (PACF). In 2008, he took the responsability of the Corot Mission Center and joined also the CDPP team in 2009 as project manager.

Dominique Delmas : As an engineer in CNES since 1986, she worked as a Ground Segment development manager on different scientific projects (Gamma, Granat/Phebus, Galileo, Mars96, Cluster, Goce, Smos). She joined the CNES CDPP team in 2010.

Nicolas Dufourg : As an engineer in CNES since 1990, he worked as a data processing architect on different projects including control centers (ATV), data treatment centers (Interball, Champ, Cassini, GAIA,...) and mission centers (Chemcam). He joined the CNES CDPP team in 2010.

Dominique Heulet : As an engineer in Computer Science since 1986, he joined CNES in 1991 as "architectural design" engineer at the CNES Computer Centre. Since 2003, he joined the "Data Valorization and Data Engineering Tools" department to take charge of the development of a generic data access system used by CDPP (access to the archive) and by other CNES projects. Since 2007, he is also in charge of the CDPP technical team at CNES.