epec_profiles – Europlanet Society

EPEC Profiles – Jessica Hogan

October 11, 2023

EPEC Profiles – Jessica Hogan

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Jessica Hogan is a PhD student in Astrobiology at The Open University, UK.

Just one month away from beginning her first year as a PhD student in the School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystem Sciences – we reflect on key experiences in her career to – date.

Jessie graduated with a B.Sc. in Planetary Science with Astronomy from Birkbeck, University of London in 2021. Her interest in Astrobiology influenced a final dissertation on the habitable zone modelling of exoplanets.

Following her studies, she was supported by a Europlanet grant to present this thesis at EPSC 2022 in Granada, alongside other early-career researchers.

The turning point came upon securing an internship in the Operations Development Division with the European Space Agency (ESA) in Madrid, Spain. Here is where she studied the icy surface of Enceladus (one of Saturn’s Moons), by analysing Cassini Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) data and modelling photometric parameters. Investigating this potentially habitable environment can further knowledge of active surface processes that may take place on icy worlds in our Solar System – in preparation for interpreting ESA’s JUICE mission findings.

Inspired by the astrobiological significance of Enceladus and other icy bodies, she is continuing to build on her existing research with her current PhD in this field.

Maintaining a personal interest in improving youth access to education, she has previously volunteered with Unibuddy to support prospective students in adjusting to the challenges that accompany higher education. Jessie was also an Ambassador for Birkbeck, where she hosted pop-up stands in colleges throughout London to share her journey as a woman in STEM.

“EPEC has been key in getting me where I am today – supporting myself and other early-careers in navigating our first conference experience, and facilitating vital collaborations between researchers in different fields. It’s an invaluable network to be a part of. Having gained knowledge and connections with other planetary scientists, my journey with EPEC has come full-circle as I contribute back via the EPEC Communications Working Group, who continue to organise all-important events and outreach activities.”

JESSICA HOGAN

More information about Jessica Hogan:

Contact: jessica.hogan@open.ac.uk

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhog

Jessica Hogan. Image credit: J. Hogan.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Victor Amir Cardoso Dorneles

August 13, 2023

EPEC Profiles – Victor Amir Cardoso Dorneles

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Victor is a PhD candidate in Astrobiology at the University of Bologna, IT.

I am currently in the last year of my PhD at the University of Bologna (IT), with a period abroad at The Natural History Museum of London (UK). My focus is to study the preservation of biosignatures in carbonate rocks from extreme modern terrestrial environments as analogues to lacustrine paleoenvironments of the Jezero crater on Mars. I am also a member of the Astrobiology and Geobiology Research Group at Unibo, and early this year I became part of the EPEC communications working group.

Over the years I have been pursuing what became a dream in my childhood. From the age of 7 to 17 I used to be a boy scout, so I grow up in touch with nature through camping, trekking, and hiking. Looking at the bright sky at night in the mountains was something that always fascinated me, and that is why I thought to be an astronomer first, to discover the wonders of the universe. Only after reading the book “Journey to the Center of the Earth” by French author Jules Verne, I realized that I needed to understand the planet where I live before exploring other worlds. In the outdoor activities as a boy scout, I used to look at the landscapes, mountains, and waterfalls and wonder how it all came about. Then, my journey in Geology started in 2014, when I was admitted to the faculty of Geology at the Federal University of Parana, in Brazil.

Coincidentally, my first contact with Astrobiology happened in the first week of my undergraduate classes when I attended a lecture on Geomicrobiology by who would become my future advisor. In that presentation, I discovered what stromatolites were and how they could be used to study ancient life on Earth, as well as their importance to the search for extraterrestrial life. That beat me in a way that was completely fascinating! It seems rash and naive to say that at that moment I was sure of my destiny, but I knew that was it. So, I survived the five years of my undergraduate degree plus two and a half years of Master’s in Geology, in which I had the opportunity to build a strong background in scientific research, learn different analytical techniques, gain experience in the laboratory, and participate in several scientific events. Finally, in my PhD I could confirm what I was sure about in 2014 in that first week of Geology undergrad, that I was going to work with Astrobiology.

Now as an adult man and geoscientist, I always try to bring the doubts of that little boy scout into my works as fuel for deciphering the Earth, and how life has evolved here, possibly on Mars and beyond!

The Europlanet Science Congress 2022 was my first contact with EPEC and it was fundamental for me to open my mind and be sure of the work I want to develop. I left the event extremely excited and energized after meeting a lot of people in my field and seeing a lot of great work in Planetary Sciences being done around the world.

VICTOR AMIR CARDOSO DORNELES

More information about Victor Amir Cardoso Dorneles:

Contact: victoramir.cardoso2@unibo.it

Website: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/victoramir.cardoso2

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Victor-Dorneles

Victor Amir Cardoso Dorneles. Image credit: G. Ruviaro.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – João Dias

July 19, 2023

EPEC Profiles – João Dias

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

João Dias is a Ph.D. student in Astronomy at the University of Lisboa, PT

Hello, I am currently starting my first year of the PhD in Astronomy at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, in Lisbon, where I also did the Master in Astrophysics and Cosmology (2022). I will be studying minor chemical species abundances on Venus and Mars. Namely, I will be mapping water and methane abundances on Mars and sulphur dioxide, water and other associated compounds on Venus, using both ground-based observations and space-based observations from Mars Express and ExoMars. I will be using high-resolution spectroscopy observations and some radiative transfer codes.

I am currently included in the team of the ARIEL space mission, in the WG regarding the synergy between the Solar System and the exoplanets, and also in the EnVision future mission to Venus.
I had the opportunity this year to participate in my first in-person conference, the EPSC 2022 in Granada, which was amazing to improve networking and discuss the recent results on Planetary Science. I recently published my first work in the journal Atmosphere.

Moreover, besides research, I have contributed individually and collectively to several Science Communication activities in Portugal, such as astronomical observations, workshops, lectures in public schools and DarkSky Astronomy festivals. I am part of an Astronomy student group in Lisbon (Viver Astronomia), of about 50 people, that helps in the development of the aforementioned activities.
In my still young experience as a researcher in Planetary Sciences, I learned the importance of communication, discussion and teamwork in science.

As a next step in my career, I look forward to expanding my contribution to the community by joining the EPEC team, namely the Communication WG.

I had my first contact with EPEC in the Annual Week event of this year (2022). It was an excellent opportunity to network with amazing people in my area of research, discover the several funding opportunities that exist and the amazing projects that EPEC is doing and developing. At the Annual Week, the Communication WG caught my attention and now that I am starting my PhD, I think it is the right time to give a contribution to this group.

JOÃO DIAS

More information about João Dias:

Contact: jadias@fc.ul.pt

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo%C3%A3o-dias-274026199

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Giacomo Nodjoumi

June 5, 2023

EPEC Profiles – Giacomo Nodjoumi

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Giacomo Nodjoumi is a Ph.D. student in Planetary Geology at Constructor University Bremen, DE

Giacomo Nodjoumi is from Italy, where he obtained degrees in Geology and Engineering Geology. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. at Constructor University Bremen. His unique blend of interests in informatics and geology has led him to describe himself as an atypical geologist.

His Ph.D. project consists of landforms detection and mapping through Deep Learning Computer Vision on Mars and the Moon within the Europlanet RI 2024. His primary targets of interest are pits and skylights, peculiar surface morphologies that might grant access to cavities! To investigate further the presence of these cavities, he is also looking at the subsurface of Mars using orbital radar MARSIS and SHARAD data. He is also co-leading the development of newer scientific data applications for lunar exploration, L-EXPLO, and L-HEX, within the EXPLORE project (https://explore-platform.eu/space-browser).

During EPSC 2022, Giacomo and his colleagues launched the 1st EXPLORE Lunar Data Challenges. Two competitions about Lunar exploration and data exploitation. The former focused on Machine Learning to involve researchers and professionals of planetary and computer sciences in mapping landforms on a region of the Moon. The latter is a didactical challenge, to involve classrooms and increase their knowledge about the Moon and how Machine Learning could improve our understanding of the Moon (https://exploredatachallenges.space/).

In 2022, Giacomo participated in the Analog-1 experiment on Mount Etna (Italy), during which the European Space Agency (ESA) conducted tests and field operations with the Interact rover.

I heard about EPEC at the beginning of my Ph.D. but I have realized why EPEC is undoubtedly a great opportunity for early career scientists only during in-person EPSC 2022.

GIACOMO NODJOUMI

More information about Giacomo Nodjoumi:

Contact: gnodjoumi@constructor.university

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giacomo-nodjoumi-80624b137/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hyradus

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hyradus/

Giacomo Nodjoumi. Image credit: Giacomo Nodjoumi.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Cai Stoddard-Jones

October 1, 2022

EPEC Profiles – Cai Stoddard-Jones

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Cai Stoddard-Jones is a PhD student in Astrophysics at Cardiff University, UK.

I’m originally from Anglesey in North Wales but spent the first few years of my life living in Los Angeles. My Dad worked for a company there which produced the heat tiles for the space shuttle and parts for the ISS. He’d bring home test pieces and show me electron microscope images of the parts – both this and an obsession with Buzz Lightyear early on prompted a lifelong love of space.

I originally planned to study Medicine in university until a Physics lesson learning about Kepler’s laws, I thought “This is cool! Oh god, this is really cool”. I quickly switched my offer from Cardiff University to Astrophysics in 2017. Just before uni started I was fortunate to win a scholarship to attend the London International Scientific Youth Forum which opened my eyes to so many different areas of science and collaboration.

I loved the time during my degree. I had so much fun and made friends that I now can’t imagine my life without. Due to COVID, I was not ready to leave Cardiff at the end of the degree. Fortunately, the supervisor of my 4th year project, Paul Roche, was able to offer me a PhD at Cardiff, continuing cometary research that I had started in the 4th year. My project is a mix of analysis of comet 29P and its unusual outbursts, and outreach with the project ‘Comet Chasers’ (follow us on Twitter @comet_chasers). This mix gives me occasionally needed breaks from intense science and data analysis.

I’ve almost finished the first year of my PhD and I’m loving it! I have no idea what’ll happen in the future but, I’m excited to see where I go.

EPSC 2022 is my first large scale conference and I’ve really enjoyed it. While attending I’ve learnt what EPEC offers and I’m very keen to join and get to know other early career researchers.
CAI STODDARD-JONES

More information about Can Stoddard-Jones:

Contact: Stoddard-JonesIC@cardiff.ac.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/caistoddardjones

Cai Stoddard-Jones. Image credit: Cai Stoddard-Jones.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

Europlanet Early Career Network (EPEC)

May 7, 2022

Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) Network

The Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) network is organised by early-career researchers, for early-career researchers, and includes volunteers from across the Europlanet international community. The EPEC network is open to all students, doctoral candidates and early-career planetary scientists and space professionals whose last degree (e.g. MSc or PhD) was obtained a maximum of 7 years ago (excluding parental leave, serious illness and similar delays).

One of the main objectives of EPEC is to form a strong network between young professionals by organising early-career-relevant events and by engaging in different projects amongst the different working groups (see website for more details on working groups). Furthermore, the EPEC community aims to bring a young voice into Europlanet Society to shape the future of planetary and space sciences and engineering.

EPEC was officially launched during EPSC 2017 in Riga.

Check out the latest EPEC news and activities.

Get involved with EPEC!

The EPEC Committee and the nine EPEC Working Groups are constantly looking for interested early-career professionals who are willing to spend some of their academic time with the organising elements of various EPEC activities. By getting involved with the EPEC Committee or one of the Working Groups, you not only get a chance to build a diverse professional network across Europe and abroad, but also build important soft-skills such as leadership qualities and management experience by working with a very friendly and energetic community.

You can also get involved in EPEC via the Early-Career Officers of your Europlanet Society Regional Hub.

For any questions and enquiries, and interest to join us in building a stronger early career network, please contact epec.network@gmail.com

Upcoming events

See EPEC News.

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If you would like to receive news (e.g., about the annual EPEC week or the next activities planned at EPSC), please sign up here. We will not spam you with lots of emails, but only send a few emails per year with relevant information.

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EPEC Profiles – Ilaria di Pietro

February 28, 2022

EPEC Profiles – Ilaria di Pietro

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Ilaria Di Pietro is currently enrolled as postdoctoral fellow at the Remote Sensing and Planetology Laboratory, University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy.

I started off as a space exploration lover when I was 8 yo thanks to “Armageddon”, the American science fiction disaster film produced and directed by Michael Bay in 1998. Since then, secretly, I always dreamed of being one of those superhero-scientists.

More than 10 years later, I chose to get my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Geological Sciences and Technology, focusing on the planetary branch among those available at the University G. d’Annunzio of Chieti. I received my PhD -which focused on the geology of Mars- in 2019 from the Research School of Planetary Science in Pescara, Italy.
My research generally focuses on sedimentary processes on the surface of Mars, with particular attention to the creation of geological-geomorphological maps of the study areas. In the planetary field, I firmly believe that the geological map is the first and most important step to reconstruct the evolution of a region of interest, especially when it is still not possible to investigate it with human in-situ exploration.

In the last few years, I have been actively working in two Horizon2020 projects: Geologic Mapping of Planetary bodies (GMAP) and In-Situ Instrument for MARS and EARTH dating applications (IN-TIME) that allowed me to improve a lot of transversal skills, team working as a visiting young researcher in a variety of international teams at the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation, Cyprus, the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, and the University of Texas at Austin, United States.

I truly wanted to get involved within the EPEC as soon as I heard about it for the first time during the Planetary Mapping Winter School 2022. I’ve found out a community of enthusiastic and passionate young professionals and I can’t wait to deeply work in this amazing and brilliant social-scientific network! Thank you EPEC!
Ilaria Di Pietro

More information about Ilaria Di Pietro:

Contact: ilaria.dipietro@unich.it

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilaria-di-pietro-98aa03161/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/seilettere2

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sei.lettere/

Ilaria Di Pietro. Image credit: Ilaria Di Pietro.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Luca Nardi

January 31, 2022

EPEC Profiles – Luca Nardi

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Luca Nardi is currently a PhD student in Information and Communication Technologies at La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.

I had my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics at La Sapienza University of Rome and now I am finishing my PhD in Information and Communication Technologies at the same university in association with the italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF-IAPS). I have always been in love with planetary science: my Master’s degree thesis was about spectroscopy of the asteroid (25143) Itokawa using data from the Hayabusa mission, and now I am studying the trace gases (water vapour and carbon monoxide) in the Martian atmosphere with infrared data from ExoMars’ TGO and Mars Express.

My other love is science communication: after finishing my Bachelor’s degree, I understood that studying fascinating things wasn’t enough for me, I wanted to share them with other people. So I began to increasingly get involved in science communication activities. First I opened a blog about astronomy and astrophysics (Cronache dal Silenzio) with which I began to learn and practice science writing and social communication, skills that now I also put into practice by writing for some magazines and by contributing with various projects. In 2018 I also began to do space science communication with my social accounts, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and now also and particularly on YouTube, where I talk about astronomy and planetary science and where I weekly interview researchers and communicators about astronomy-related topics. I love social media communication, because social media are perfect tools to reach people and share images, videos, ideas about the beauty of our universe.

For this reason, in 2020 I participated to the EPSC2020 social media internship and, after that, I continued to work as social media manager for the Europlanet Society, where I took part to the communication team. I am very proud to be part of this, since Europlanet is a very important infrastructure aimed at creating a planetary science network in Europe, and I believe in the key importance of communication in order to reach this goal.

After the incoming ending of my PhD, I definitely see my future in space science communication, for which I have a lot of ideas and projects that only waits to be put in practice.

I got in contact with EPEC for the first time during EPSC2019 in Geneva, that was my first science congress as a PhD student and I was really amazed by the enthusiasm I saw in this network. I then worked with the EPEC team during my internship in EPSC2020 and my first impression was confirmed. I think it is very important that young planetary scientist have such an amazing community to which they can refer when beginning this wonderful career. Thank you EPEC!
LUCA NARDI

More information about Luca Nardi:

Contact: info@luca-nardi.it

Web: https://www.luca-nardi.it/

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/LucaNardiscience

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucanardi_science/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lucanardi_space

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Noah Jäggi

December 17, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Noah Jäggi

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Noah Jäggi is currently a PhD student in Space Research & Planetary Sciences, at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern.

I started off as a rock lover and slowly drifted into space. My journey had its liftoff when I did my bachelor thesis. The task was simple. There was a lot of data of CAIs collected by a PhD student and now it was up to me to figure out if it was possible to classify the CAIs based on those datasets. Do you find the lack of explanation confusing? Maybe mysterious or even overwhelming? Then you know how I felt – and it was exactly that which gave me the drive to pursue a career in science, or at least to dip my toe into the ocean of possibilities that is research.

After the expedition into the world of CAIs, or Calcium-Aluminium-rich Inclusions, the first condensates forming out of a protoplanetary disk, I had an original idea for an MSc thesis in the same area of research. Sadly, we didn’t get the samples, but as a condolence prize, I was offered to contribute work to a PhD project. The similarity to the bachelor thesis was stunning: There was no data yet of tiny melt droplets that formed in space around 4.5 billion years ago, called chondrules that are used by the PhD student. Now it was up to me to figure out if it was possible to better classify the chondrules. The method? Tomography! I was as fascinated as I was overwhelmed – and agreed to the offer on the spot.

History repeated itself about a year later when I sent in my application for a PhD in Physics. The job description clearly pointed out that an MSc in Physics or equivalent was required, but the topic of space weathering on the Moon and Mercury sounded geological enough for me to take another leap of faith. Now I am here, almost three years into this PhD, and I found great joy in applying all I learned from planetary geochemistry to the world of planetary physics. On the way, I found great friends, side projects that became main projects and, of course, EPEC!

I joined the annual week back in 2019 in Portugal and met all the great people from EPEC there. Initially, I was most interested in early career support, but after having met Solmaz Adheli and Maike Neuland, the former chairs of the EPEC@EPSC working group, I joined them in a flash… and hosted the Science Flash at EPSC 2019 in Geneva. After the virtual Flash (and EPSC) in 2020, both Solmaz and Maike stepped down due to being in a late stage of their early career. Since the beginning of 2021, I’m now chair of the awesome working group which is EPEC@EPSC and can’t wait for the next in-person EPSC!

The EPEC@EPSC working group is the perfect mix of having fun and connecting people. There is no better recompense than seeing early careers connect in the event you (yes YOU!) got off the ground. See you all in person again soon… 3… 2… 1… liftoff!
Noah Jäggi

More information about Noah Jäggi:

Contact: noah.jaeggi@unibe.ch

Noah Jäggi. Image credit: Thomas de Selva-Dewint.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Joana S. Oliveira

November 15, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Joana S. Oliveira

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Joana S. Oliveira is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Space Magnetism Laboratory from the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA), close to Madrid, Spain.

She studies the internal (crustal and core) magnetic fields of different planetary bodies: Mercury, the Moon, and Mars. In particular, she is developing a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships Action which uses terrestrial analogs data acquisition and modeling to better understand magnetic sources origin from the Moon and Mars. Understanding the origin of such sources will help to get the full picture of the terrestrial planets’ surface and internal history.

She is a member of the BepiColombo Science Working Team. She also co-chairs the BepiColombo Young Scientists Study Group (BC YSSG), an innovative way to engage early-career individuals in their scientific careers to get maximum scientific output on space missions, while helping to boost their careers.

She was born and raised in Portugal where she completed her Master’s degree in Astrophysics and Instrumentation for Space, at Coimbra University. She got her Ph.D. degree in Planetary Sciences where she modeled Mercury’s core magnetic field using spacecraft data, at the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique (LPG) and Nantes University, France. She had her first postdoctoral experience in the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) where she studied crustal magnetic anomalies of the Moon. She had her second postdoctoral experience at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, where she investigated crustal magnetic anomalies of Mercury and the Moon.

She was present in the EPEC creation meeting at Riga in 2017, and started to be a committee member while participating in the EPEC@EPSC WG (from 2019 to 2021), and gave support to develop the Communications WG during its first steps in 2020.

Participating in building the EPEC network and watching its evolution is very satisfying, especially when you know it has reached more than 500 young researchers (and keeps growing)!
EPEC is a nice community to improve several soft skills that researchers need to develop their professional careers. The sooner you start, the better skilled you become to develop your research projects!
JOANA S. OLIVEIRA

More information about Joana S. Oliveira:

WebOfScience Researcher ID

ORCiD

Contact: jrodoli@inta.es

Joana S. Oliveira. Image credit: Thomas Cornet.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Dimitrios Athanasopoulos

October 15, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Dimitrios Athanasopoulos

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Dimitrios Athanasopoulos is a Ph.D. candidate at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) in Greece. His research focuses on the most ancient asteroid families that have been discovered. He is performing observations to reveal the asteroids’ spin state.

From a young age, I was particularly interested in the Natural Sciences and especially in Astrophysics and Planetary Science. With the ambition to become a researcher, I set a goal to study at the Department of Physics of NKUA. The first step was taken and the journey to knowledge and research began.

During my undergraduate studies, I took part in a European student competition, where I came up with an alternative scenario of Lunar colonization that uses Lunar morphology, namely lunar pits, to protect astronauts from cosmic radiation. As part of this work, I developed code and performed original computational simulations calculating the radiation levels in these structures. Thanks to my performance, I was given the opportunity to do a 6-month internship at the European Astronaut Center (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, of the European Space Agency (ESA). There, I was a member of the Spaceship EAC team, and my work was included radiation shielding simulations for the Moon Village scenario.

In the summer of 2018, I participated in the Alpbach Summer School with the theme “Sample return from small solar system bodies”, where European students are invited to prepare a space mission proposal divided into groups. My group’s proposal was to return a sample from a type D type asteroid in order to find the relationship between asteroids and comets. Our proposal was distinguished with two awards.

After the Summer School, asteroids were included in my research interests. Hence, I enrolled in the Master in Astrophysics program at my university, and I worked on the photometric observations of the most ancient asteroids. Now, as a Ph.D. candidate, I want to delve into this field and answer research questions that arise about the oldest asteroid families and the information they give us about the early stages of our Solar System.

In the last years, I am working as a high-school teacher and in the last semester, I was working as Graduate Teaching Assistant at my University, performing lab courses for undergraduate students. Apart from teaching, I also like science communication. As an active member of the “Planets In Your Hand” team (awarded by Europlanet Funding Scheme 2017), I have conducted many outreach activities. I believe that public outreach is the duty of the scientific community so knowledge to be spread in the wider community and everyone can benefit.

Lastly, an international observing campaign, called “Ancient Asteroids”, supports my Ph.D. and was initiated willing to establish a node between professional and amateur astronomers, a Pro-Am collaboration for the characterization of the oldest asteroid families.

Everyone should have the opportunity to participate in the discovery.

The EuroPlanet Early Career (EPEC) network lays a solid foundation for tomorrow’s scientific community in Planetary Science. I am very happy to be part of this multidisciplinary team.
DIMITRIOS ATHANASOPOULOS

More information about Dimitrios Athanasopoulos:

Contact: dimathanaso@phys.uoa.gr

Dimitrios Athanasopoulos. Image credit: Kosmas Gazeas

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Carina Heinreichsberger

September 30, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Carina Heinreichsberger

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Carina Heinreichsberger is working on the upper atmospheres of Earth, Venus, and Mars with a 1D hydrodynamic Code developed at the Institute of Astrophysics in Vienna.

My story is not the typical “I have gazed into the night sky since I was a kid” – kind of story. I was actually quite bad at maths and physics during school. However, when Curiosity landed on Mars things changed. I was suddenly really interested in a topic that I have never thought about before. I read all the news I could find and at some point, decided that reading about it was not enough anymore; I wanted to work on it. I want to be at the very front of science, ask my own questions and find answers to them.

At the same time, being very aware of my lacking knowledge in maths and physics, I began wondering if biology might be more suitable (I attended a school that was focused on biology and chemistry). But I went for it. I formed strong bonds with my colleagues, whom I can now call very close friends, and it paid off! I made it through my Astrophysics Bachelor’s Degree and started my Master’s Degree courses in 2018.

During my time at the Institute of Astrophysics in Vienna, I have always been amazed by exoplanetary science. There was a time when I thought I would become a cosmologist, but I quickly decided that my home lies with planetary bodies. Planet formation is especially fascinating for me, and for my Bachelor’s thesis, I worked on a topic that was related to this – the classification of exoplanets through their mean densities. The wake-up call from this highly naïve approach came soon enough, with planets of densities around 1000g/cm^3. This was the point when I first realized that there are many things that seem simple but are highly complicated. I loved it and still do!

For my Master’s thesis, I joined Manuel Güdel’s group, and since then I have been working on upper atmospheres with a 1D hydrodynamic code called Kompot-Code, developed at our institute in Vienna. Currently, I am testing this code with the future goal being the investigation of early Venus’ CO2 mixing ratios, and/or Mars atmospheric escape.

I joined the EPEC annual week with no expectations, and left with new friends and a supportive community behind me. The working groups are an amazing opportunity to form connections with other scientists and I am happy to be part of this wonderful group of people now.
Carina Heinreichsberger

More information about Carina Heinreichsberger:

Webpage

Twitter

Instagram

Contact: c.hb@gmx.at

Carina Heinreichsberger. Image credit: Johannes Seelig

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – José Eduardo Silva

August 25, 2021

EPEC Profiles – José Eduardo Silva

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

José Eduardo Silva is a PhD Candidate in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) in Lisbon, Portugal. He works with spacecraft imaging data of Solar System planets in order to study the dynamics and features of their atmospheres.

Though I was curious and interested in other worlds throughout my childhood, my planetary journey only truly began shortly before I enrolled in a Bachelor of Physics course at the Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon. My initial curiosity was guided towards stellar birth and interstellar medium (in part due to the seductive and beautiful imagery from Hubble Space Telescope), but I’ve found myself steered towards the study of Solar System planets ever since my Master’s course.

What struck me from the beginning as both magnificent and awe inspiring is the diversity of ‘little worlds’ within such a tiny corner of the Universe (our Solar System), from the scorching wasteland of the surface of Venus, to the icy plains of Pluto – taking a left turn into the strange configuration of the gas giants, planets without a surface and with mesmerizing atmospheric patterns.

Currently I’m close to the ‘end of the beginning’ of my astronomical journey (I hope), working to conclude a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics, still in sunny Lisbon. My main focus is on the study of the dynamics of atmospheres of several planets – most recently Venus, although I’m always eager to take a few jabs at other targets. This exploration includes using spacecraft and ground based data to study how the atmosphere behaves and find out about the driving mechanisms that sustain wildly different modes of circulation. To do this, I went in search of particular atmospheric features called atmospheric gravity waves on Venus, one possible key ingredient in powering the enigmatic super-rotion of Venus’ atmosphere (at the cloud top the atmosphere of Venus rotates about 60 times faster than the solid globe).

This bubbling curiosity usually spills over, which has made me find a second passion in my life: sharing this wonderful cosmos of astronomy and planetary sciences with whoever is willing to listen to me. I’ve been involved in outreach activities since 2012, usually stargazing with the general public with a little help from portable telescopes but also small lectures and even sailing across the stars as my Portuguese ancestors once did.

During my PhD I also took the opportunity to teach minor physics courses to Bachelor’s students in other areas, including computing engineering and geophysics. Though only an assistant, this adventure has been the seed of my third passion and ambition: teaching astronomy in an attempt to improve education and elevate this field in my country.

Today, as I’m writing this text and my thesis at the same time, I wonder where this road will lead. I can only hope that my skills in image-analysis and atmospheric characteristion will take me to many worlds in the Solar System, so that then I can share that knowledge back to the wider community because, in my view, science is truly for everyone!

In the meantime I’ll try to continue exploring this world, hiking through the landscape, or other worlds through storytelling around the table.

An essential component to scientific research is teamwork and collaboration. EPEC has provided a wonderful opportunity to meet and work with enthusiastic people who have inspired me in more ways than I can count. It is also the best place to cement the important influence early careers can have in shaping up the science of tomorrow. I’ve been continuously thrilled to be part of the team and give a hand to my fellow colleagues on all things concerning our field and hope for a better future for all of us!
José Eduardo Silva

More information about José Eduardo Silva:

Webpage

ResearchGate

Contact: jsilva@oal.ul.pt

José Eduardo Silva. Image credit: J. Silva

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Ines Belgacem

July 20, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Ines Belgacem

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Ines is currently a research fellow at the European Space Agency in Madrid, Spain. She studies the icy surfaces of our solar system and, more particularly, Jupiter’s icy moons in preparation for ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. Her main focus is looking at photometric data – i.e. how the light is reflected off of a surface w.r.t. the geometry of observation and illumination. This is directly linked to the surface microtexture (roughness, shape of particles, etc.) and can help us learn more about the evolution of a planetary body and the processes at play.

She graduated with her PhD in November 2019 from the Université of Paris Saclay in France for which she was awarded the Amelia Earhart fellowship (Zonta international) in 2018. She completed the first part of her studies at ISAE-SUPAERO and Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France in engineering and astrophysics.

Ines is also very invested in outreach activities. She loves sharing her passion with the general public and especially getting kids engaged in space science and astrophysics. Recently, she co-created with fellow scientists he Sens’Astro association with the aim to share content to discover space through the 5 senses. Not only is it an original way of looking at astrophysics but the main objective is to make the wonders of space accessible to people with sensory disabilities.

Born and raised in Toulouse, France, she maintains strong ties to her hometown with her outreach and advocacy engagements. She is one of the ambassadors of the OSE l’ISAE-SUPAERO program of the ISAE-SUPAERO foundation aimed at promoting access to higher studies to children from rural and underserved areas. Diversity and representation are subjects very close to her heart.

She has joined the Europlanet society and EPEC in 2019 as an Early Career Officer for the French hub and has since been very involved in the EPEC committee as well as the communications working group. She is part of the newly formed team managing the social media accounts of EPEC.

EPEC has been a great way to meet young planetary scientists from all over Europe that I would have never crossed paths with. I made new friends and I’m happy to keep building the network and its activities together.
INES BELGACEM

More information about Ines Belgacem:

Contact: ines.belgacem@esa.int

Ines Belgacem. Image credit: Ines Belgacem

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

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EPEC Profiles – Arianna Ricchiuti

June 15, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Arianna Ricchiuti

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Arianna Ricchiuti is a Biologist with a Master in Science Communication and Journalism. She is currently Editor of EJR-Quartz for the European Space Agency (ESA), working at ESA Communication Office in Noordwijk (Netherlands), where she is responsible for internal communications and events.

Prior to this role, Arianna had been working as Planetarium Presenter and Outreach Officer at the Planetarium of Bari (Italy), creating and hosting shows and astronomical observations for schools and general public. Arianna has also been speaker at many science congresses and festivals all over Europe.

Her commitment towards science communication brought her different awards: from the victory in the 2016 national final of FameLab, worldwide competition about science communication, to the 2020 Space Factor Award from EANA, the European Astrobiology Network Association.

Arianna Ricchiuti with ESA astronauts Samantha Cristoforetti and Luca Parmitano during the ESTEC Open Day 2020.
Image Credit: Arianna Ricchiuti

I’ve always dreamt of working at ESA. During the first years of university, I had the chance to meet astronauts like Umberto Guidoni and Paolo Nespoli, who inspired me to pursue a career in the space field, particularly towards ESA. At the same time I started to work at the Planetarium of Bari, where I discovered the world of scicomm and outreach… and I fell in love with it! That’s why I went on with a Master in Science Communication and in 2019 I started a 6-months internship at ESA ESTEC, the main site of the agency, based in NL. It was such an exciting time, where I had the chance to live and work with people from all over the world and take part in unique activities (I even created an exhibition!). In 2020 I got a position as Editor with EJR-Quartz, an amazing company that offers communication, marketing and social media services to several institutions, ESA included… Literally what I’ve been dreaming of! I must say starting a new job abroad during a pandemic has been really tough, but I’m truly grateful to my company for the chance, support and lovely atmosphere.

Never give up guys, opportunities can come and change your life in unexpected ways.

I joined EPEC one year ago and it was the best decision of my life! I’ve found a community of passionate and dynamic young professionals, who are really trasforming the world of science communication and outreach through brilliant initiatives and networking opportunities. Looking forward to meeting you all!
Arianna Ricchiuti

More information about Arianna Ricchiuti:

Contact: arianna94ricchiuti@gmail.com

Arianna Ricchiuti. Credit: Marisa Di Pinto.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Safoura Tanbakouei

May 15, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Safoura Tanbakouei

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Safoura Tanbakouei is a planetary science researcher working as a Postdoc in Division of Earth and Planetary Science and the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong.

Studying the solar system and its bodies has always been a dream to me, since I was in school, and I am so pleased for being in this amazing field and try to have a crucial role in planetary explorations.
In the last 6 years, I am have been working in the field of planetary science investigating various planetary exploration methods such as laboratory spectroscopy from ultraviolet to Near-infrared spectroscopy of meteorites and asteroids.

I obtained my doctoral degree in 2020 from Institute of Space Sciences in University of Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain on the topic of Mineralogy and spectral properties of asteroids and meteorites. In my thesis I have done Raman spectroscopy and nanoindentation techniques on the samples of asteroid Itokawa –returned samples by Hayabusa missin of JAXA- to find out the shock phases of the regolith and also physical properties of asteroid Itokawa. I have achieved many expertise in the reflectivity of the space rocks and their comparison to the reflectance properties of minor bodies in the solar system.

In my current position, I am doing research in the natural resources on Mars, mineralogy and spectroscopy of Martian surface. Doing mineral mapping of the hydrated phases in the surface of Mars and try to locate water regions.

I believe being part of the EPEC is be a great experience of networking, interacting with other planetray scientists among the world, enhancing creativity and sharing science plus fun!
Safoura Tanbakouei

More information about Safoura Tanbakouei:

Contact: stanba@hku.hk

Safoura Tanbakouei. Credit: Safoura Tanbakouei’s archive.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Julie Nováková

April 1, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Julie Nováková

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Julie Nováková is an evolutionary biologist with an interest in astrobiology and planetary science, educator and award-winning Czech author and editor of science fiction. She co-teaches an astrobiology class at her alma mater, the Faculty of Science, Charles University, and co-organises an astrobiology seminar there.

Julie has been doing science outreach for more than a decade now, and writing science fiction for even longer. She has merged these activities as the leader of the ‘Science Fiction as A Tool of Astrobiology Outreach & Education’ project team at the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) and co-leader of EAI’s outreach working group.

As her first major project at the EAI, she created an outreach anthology of acclaimed authors’ science fiction stories with astrobiological topics, each accompanied by a themed nonfiction piece written by herself. The book, titled ‘Strangest of All’, is freely available in several e-book formats at her own website and EAI’s site, and it also includes tips for use in classroom. More books, exhibitions, talks and interviews are being prepared by her and her team.

She received the Professor Jaroslav Heyrovský Award (Charles University’s Rector’s Award for students of natural sciences) in 2017, and has amassed multiple awards as a writer, editor and translator. Science and storytelling are her two greatest passions, and she intends to further pursue both and integrate them in innovative outreach projects in the vein of STEAM.

The goal? First evoke the sense of wonder and curiosity… and then take it from there. Always make people ask more questions rather than just memorise answers. Always show the amazing, often tumultuous and sometimes erroneous journey to a scientific conclusion. Firstly, it’s a story to tell. Secondly, understanding the process of science promotes critical thinking and more in-depth understanding rather than shallow memory. By engaging people’s emotions, stories can, hand in hand with other approaches, help achieve this.

Julie is also a member of Europlanet Society and the XPRIZE Sci-fi Advisory Council. Her newest book is a story collection titled The Ship Whisperer (Arbiter Press, 2020).

Why EPEC? Because communities are vital in science. The popular image of the ‘lone wolf scientist’ is so far from actual reality! Scientific work is achieved in teams and further circles, and EPEC enables early-career researchers to find inspiration, mentors, friends, useful information and better footing to pursue their careers.
JULIE NOVÁKOVÁ

More information about Julie Nováková:

Contact: julie.novakova@natur.cuni.cz

Julie Nováková. Credit: Julie Nováková’s archive.

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Gavin Tolometti

March 2, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Gavin Tolometti

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Gavin Tolometti is a PhD student at the University of Western Ontario and uses radar data to study the surface roughness of lava flows on Earth, the Moon and Mars.

As a kid, I always found volcanoes, lava flows and magma in general incredibly interesting! However, once I realised other planetary bodies in our solar system, including our own natural satellite, have lava flows I was convinced that planetary science was the field for me.

It took a while to get on to a planetary science path. I started with a bachelors degree in geology, and it was not until the final year of my undergraduate degree in 2016 that I learned I could study lava flows for a PhD!

My study focuses on using radar remote sensing data to study the surface roughness of lava flows on Earth, the Moon and Mars. The surface roughness of a lava flow provides us a window into learning about the emplacement styles of lava flows on other planetary bodies, which can inform us about the eruption dynamics and thermal properties of planetary interiors. I use radar data collected by airbourne platforms and Earth orbiting satellites, including the ESA Sentinel-1 satellite and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar platform.

My PhD has taken me to some very exciting locations, including Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho, USA and the 2014-15 Holuhraun lava flow-field in central Iceland. Iceland is my most memorable experience conducting field work because I was given the role as logistics lead. I had to ensure the safety of my team and lead a field expedition funded by the Canadian Space Agency. It was also the first time I had visited Iceland and driven a vehicle through a river (nervously!) to reach our field site.

Gavin Tolometti in the field. Credit: G. Tolometti.

I have also been involved in two high fidelity analogue sample return missions. In 2016, I was part of the CanMars 2016 Sample Return Mission field team where we were tasked to simulate a rover on Mars searching for organic sediments. This included using geochemical and hyperspectral handheld field instruments to analyse sedimentary rocks in Utah, similar to the instruments attached to the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity mission. In 2019, I was part of the CanMoon Sample Return Mission planning team where we simulated a sample return mission on the Moon in preparation for the NASA Artemis Lunar Gateway initiative.

As well as my research, I am also involved in science communication on social media and I am part of a graduate student podcast committee group known as “GradCast” at the University of Western Ontario. I got into listening to podcasts at the start of my PhD, but I never thought I would get to participate in a podcast and learn about the amazing research conducted by other students in different departments.

My interests in podcasting and science communication has me on a path to strengthen the bridge between STEAM and the public. Learning how to best communicate ground breaking scientific discoveries, discuss important news, and share our passion for fields in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) with the public will benefit not only ourselves, but the entire world.

“Getting involved with EPEC has been extremely rewarding as I have gotten to meet and work with many incredible researchers. I will continue to become more involved with EPEC and contribute to the society using my science communication and research skills.”
Gavin Tolometti

More information about Gavin Tolometti:

GradCast Radio

Contact: gtolomet@uwo.ca

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Juan Luis Rizos

January 19, 2021

EPEC Profiles – Juan Luis Rizos

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Juan Luis Rizos is a postdoc researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias working on machine learning tools to exploit spectral data from Solar System missions.

Dr Juan Luis Rizos was born in El Carpio, a small village that sits on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, near Cordoba, in the south of Spain. He started working in the music world as a youth, but always showed a strong interest in science. For this reason, he combined his work with studies in physics by distance learning. After graduating, he decided to continue with science, first earning a Master’s degree in Physics and Mathematics, and finally a PhD in Astrophysics. Although he never planned to become an astrophysicist, life offered him this opportunity and he did not hesitate in taking it.

During his PhD, Dr Rizos was an active member of the Image Processing Working Group of the OSIRIS-REx mission. This sample return NASA mission was launched to study the primitive asteroid (101955) Bennu, and he performed a spectrophotometric characterisation of the surface. using MapCam data, a medium-field imager. Given the large astronomical datasets taken by MapCam for several years, it was necessary to develop a methodology to manage these data for a spectral characterization of the Bennu surface. His methodology consisted of an unsupervised machine learning classification through the K-Means algorithm. It allowed the identification of spectral clusters with similarities for a global and local characterisation, with particular attention being paid to the places where the sample would be collected.

Currently, Dr Rizos is a postdoc researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. He is interested in building machine learning tools to exploit spectral data from Solar System missions.

“Spectral data are a valuable source of information for understanding planetary surfaces, ranging from mineralogical composition to morphology, age, particle size, or organic molecules content. Until now, all unmanned missions to other bodies in the Solar System incorporate a suite of spectral instruments for high precision measurements. However, these instruments acquire large amounts of data that are almost impossible to analyse only by humans,” said Dr Rizos.

“EPEC is an amazing working group for young scientists. It brings together people from different places but with similar interests in Planetary Science. It puts a strong emphasis on cooperation and networking between different areas. I think early careers can make a big contribution to the community: they have an essential freshness and vitality.”
Juan Luis Rizos

More information about Juan Luis Rizos:

Twitter

Contact: juanluisrizos@gmail.com

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Foivos Karakostas

December 18, 2020

EPEC Profiles – Foivos Karakostas

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Foivos Karakostas is a PostDoctoral Associate at the University of Maryland. His field is planetary seismology and he works for the NASA InSight mission.

I am a geophysicist, more precisely a planetary seismologist, and one of the luckiest inhabitants of Earth, as in 2012 I started my involvement in Planetary Seismology, when Philippe Lognonné offered me an internship related to the InSight mission. Months later, after a decades-long wait, a new seismometer was selected to be deployed on the ground of another planet. The renaissance of Planetary Seismology with InSight, after the Apollo and Viking era, is the best thing that could happen to the new generation of seismologists interested in other worlds.

Like many other kids, I grew up being fascinated about planets and I wanted to study them. My interest was extended to the large scales of the universe or the human exploration of the outer space, but what was always more fascinating for me were these other worlds, different than ours, with exotic landscapes and possibly different life! Unlike many childhood dreams, this one came true, and no matter the challenges that any early career scientist encounters these days, doing this job is a motivation to tackle them all.

Since 2012, I have been working exclusively on topics related to the seismic investigation of other planets and planetary bodies. If I could make a metaphor, my research interests are following the way we investigate the planets, starting from their exterior, the visible part, and going deeper, where the secrets about the planetary formation and evolution are hidden but ready to be revealed. In my PhD studies I developed methodologies for using meteor associated events, airbursts or impacts, as seismic sources, generating surface waves on extraterrestrial environments. Therefore, it was a work in the atmosphere and shallow subsurface. Now, I extend my investigation to the structure of the Martian lithosphere, more precisely through the study of the attenuation of seismic waves, recorded by InSight.

Working for a space mission is tremendously beneficial for a young scientist, as it is a highly collaborative environment, with opportunities to be involved in many different projects and the chance to interact with some of the experts of the field. It is something that I would like to see happening across the broader scientific community. This is why I am keen to contribute to the activities of the Europlanet Society.

I often like to quote Carl Sagan: “Of all the fields of mathematics, technology, and science, the one with the greatest international cooperation […] is the field called “Earth and space sciences.” Studying this world and others, by its very nature, tends to be non-local, non-nationalist, non-chauvinist.” My understanding is that the incarnation of this message are the organizations of international communication and cooperation and we need to support them, through active participation. I consider that the scientific culture and communication is the ground where we perform our work, prepared by others, patiently and tirelessly. We should preserve this tradition for the good of science, the best thing that happened to humanity and we decided to dedicate our lives to it.

“I recently joined the Communications Working Group of the EuroPlanet Early Career (EPEC) network. My goal is to use the experience from extracurricular activities for the needs of the network. Until today I have written dozens of popularized articles on new advances on planetary exploration and I am podcasting, with the aim of conveying the core concepts of recently published scientific papers in plain language. This outreach activity is highly beneficial, as it allows us to better understand the contribution of our work to the society, while developing skills of inter-scientific communication.”
Foivos Karakostas

More information about Foivos Karakostas:

Contact: foivos@foivos.eu

Foivos Karakostas. Credit: Foivos Karakostas

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.

EPEC Profiles – Rutu Parekh

November 20, 2020

EPEC Profiles – Rutu Parekh

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Rutu Parekh is pursuing a PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin and German Space Center on understanding ‘The influence of volatiles on the asteroid surface: Vesta and Ceres’.

My journey as a planetary researcher has been quite a roller coaster ride so far. However, each stepping stone has helped me to grow in my professional career. Currently, I am pursuing my phd at Freie Universität Berlin and German Space Center (DLR) on understanding ‘ The influence of volatile on the asteroid surface: Vesta and Ceres’.

My study region is focused on to analyse the icy planetary bodies. Various morphological features are associated with volatile outgassing, which has shaped the surface of asteroids. These features help us to understand the evolution of Vesta and Ceres. For this study I use data from the Dawn mission. Further, I also worked on the fractal analysis of boulders identified on the rubble-pile Ryugu asteroid. For this, I used the data from the Hayabusa2 mission which was a collaboration between JAXA and DLR.

Other than being full time researcher, I am also volunteering as tbe Secretary of the Europlanet Diversity Committee and Chair of the EPEC Diversity Working Group. Last, year we launched a series entitled ‘Motivational Journeys‘ under the EPEC Diversity Working Group. This series is a collection of interviews where we discuss the professional journey of experienced scientists in the field of planetary science and provide motivation to early career researchers from diverse environments and cultures.

Additionally, due to my passion towards art and science, I also sketch science in my free time. Being a full time researcher and a constant supporter of creativity, I strongly believe that communicating science is equally important as research and when done in an effective way, it could inspire next generation to take STEM as full time career.

Signing off from Ryugu. #sketchingscinence #artandscience @haya2e_jaxa @DLR_en @DLR_de @MASCOT2018 pic.twitter.com/GVLIjRVcPf
— Rutu (@icy_planetnerd) November 24, 2019

“EPEC has provided me with a supportive platform to network and communicate with fellow early careers. It has also served as tremendous source of support and motivation at various stages of my career so far.”
Rutu Parekh

More information about Rutu Parekh:

Contact: rutu.parekh@dlr.de

Rutu Parekh. Image credit: Indhu Varatharajan

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.