Europlanet has opened a call for funding proposals of up to 5000 € to support the activities of its members. Proposals should be submitted by the Chair (or designated representative) of a Europlanet Regional Hub, Committee or Working Group (WG).
The deadline for the call is 16 March 2026. Projects proposed in the current call should be completed by the end of 2026.
New Year’s Day 2026 is Europlanet’s 21st birthday. To celebrate, we highlight 21 things that Europlanet has achieved since its foundation on 1 January 2005.
First held in Berlin in 2006, the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) is the largest annual meeting on planetary science in Europe and regularly attracts over 1200 participants. Its interdisciplinary, interactive and adaptive format makes EPSC an ideal place for the global planetary community to share ideas and build new connections. Joint meetings with the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences (DPS) and the European Astrobiology Network Association (EANA) have brought together even bigger international and cross-disciplinary audiences, with the recent EPSC-DPS2025 in Helskinki becoming the largest planetary meeting to date in Europe with 1800 participants.
Europlanet provides access to state-of-the-art research and technology infrastructure (RTI) to support planetary science and space exploration. The distributed RTI includes facilities for the simulation of planetary environments, analysis of planetary samples, testing and development of space technologies, and support of interdisciplinary studies. Our Transnational Access (TA) programme is designed to allow researchers from anywhere in the world, and at all career stages, to have access to facilities to support scientific and technological excellence in planetary/space research and to foster international collaborations. To date, Europlanet has funded over 600 research visits, amounting to in excess of 5,500 days of access (15 years), involving over 800 individual researchers accessing 23 laboratories (with over 80 individual facilities), 12 planetary analogue field sites and 17 telescopes.
Applications for a new TA call will open later in January.
Europlanet is a grass-roots organisation, supported by individual members since 2018 and organisational members since 2025. Membership benefits include discounted fees for EPSC, access to facilities, expert exchanges, webinars, training, workshops, funding schemes and much more. Join now to help us continue our mission to support the planetary community around the world.
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).
EPEC’s activities, including Annual Week and EPEC@EPSC, aim to form a strong network between young professionals by organising early-career-relevant events and by engaging in different projects amongst different focus areas (outreach, diversity, early career support). As early careers comprise over half Europlanet’s individual members and attendees at EPSC, EPEC ensures that the (scientifically) young members of our community have a clear voice within Europlanet to shape the future of planetary and space sciences and engineering.
Europlanet’s Regional Hubs support the development of planetary science at a national and regional level, particularly in countries and areas that are currently under-represented within the community. Our Hub Committees organise networking events and workshops to support the research community, as well as to build links with amateur astronomers, industrial partners, policymakers, educators, the media and the wider public. In addition to 10 European Regional Hubs, a Colombian Regional Hub was established in 2025 to support the community in Colombia and Latin America.
Europlanet was founded as a Coordination Action funded by the European Commission (EC) in 2005-2008 to promote networking, support the sharing of resources and overcome fragmentation in the European planetary science community. Through a series of further EC grants awarded between 2009 and 2024, Europlanet has subsequently developed into a global distributed research infrastructure that offers coordinated access to services and facilities spread over 5 continents, supporting a community of thousands of users in academia, industry and in the wider community. In total, the EC has invested €28 million in Europlanet to support the planetary community.
Europlanet has received funding from the European Commission under Grant Numbers 871149, 654208, 228319 and RICA-CT-2004-001637.
VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access) is a web-based search interface to identify and access planetary science and heliophysics data provided by the science community. Developed through EC-funded Europlanet projects, and hosted and maintained by the Observatory of Paris, VESPA is freely available to researchers and the general public. The VESPA portal supports user-friendly searching on metadata associated with generic observation conditions (such as target, instrument, time/space/spectral coverages, illumination conditions, etc) and metadata specific to each dataset (such as instrumental parameters) via the EPN-TAP protocol, which is now a standard of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) for Solar system data. Nearly 250 EPN-TAP data services of various size are declared in the IVOA registry, of which 94 are currently validated and accessible via the portal – including ESA’s Planetary Science Archive (PSA). VESPA also offers an easy solution for small teams to share newly-derived data from a publication or a research project.
Europlanet’s SPIDER Planetary Space Weather Services provide contextual information on predictions and alerts for planetary space weather analysis and payload or spacecraft operations. SPIDER enables researchers to take advantage of data from a suite of missions at different points in the Solar System. Applications of SPIDER’s tools have led to several high-impact publications, and have been used to support planning of the BepiColombo and Juice missions. Opportunities identified through SPIDER for synergistic observations by BepiColombo during its cruise phase with the Solar Orbiter and Solar Parker Probe missions have also been implemented by ESA and JAXA.
The Geological Mapping (GMAP) activity provides a complete infrastructure for the geological mapping of planetary bodies. As well as everything needed to create planetary maps, GMAP provides guidelines and insights on how to produce effective mapping products for scientific exploitation, as well as information on how to display and archive results in a structured way.
GMAP supports researchers who are interested in learning how to build their own mapping products, as well as mappers who want to learn how to incorporate other types of data analysis into their products.
One of GMAP’s major successes has been the establishment of the annual Geology & Planetary Mapping Winter School. Now in its fifth iteration, the Winter School provides training for anyone interested in planetary mapping to build knowledge and skills in planetary mapping. Participants can follow synchronously or asynchronously to accommodate different time zones. The 2026 edition will run from 26-30 January 2026.
Find out more or register now>>
The Europlanet Telescope Network brings together medium and small telescopes to facilitate and coordinate observations related to planetary science. Founded in 2020, the telescope network has awarded 256.5 observing nights and supported 44 projects on planetary topics from near Earth objects to exoplanets, as well as astrophysical subjects including black holes and binary star systems. As well as supporting the professional scientific community, the Europlanet telescope Network has provided access and training for amateur astronomers to enable them to contribute to planetary research. Since the end of the EC-funded project, the Europlanet Telescope Network has maintained a list of telescopes willing to offer observing time to the community. The Europlanet Telescope Network currently unites 21 observatories with 32 telescopes in 16 countries.
Europlanet holds monthly webinars on a range of topics from science to policy, diversity and outreach. Quarterly webinars are also co-organised with the Science Team of the ESA Juice mission.
In addition to EPSC and EPEC Annual Week, Europlanet organises a range of meetings, summer schools, workshops and training sessions to support the community. Our interactive online Teams Days, held 2-3 times per year, are an opportunity for the community to provide input and feedback into Europlanet’s strategy and operations. The Europlanet Research Infrastructure Meeting (ERIM) in 2023 comprised a series of interactive workshops with the aim of promoting collaboration across the Europlanet community. More recently, policy workshops organised in partnership with other research infrastructures have helped share information on upcoming opportunities and best practice for distributed RIs.
In total, over the past two decades, Europlanet has provided training for over 7,500 members of the planetary community, with a particular focus on early career researchers.
Join hundreds of other Europlanet members on our Discord server to keep up with news, events, job opportunities and to connect with colleagues around the world. The server is designed with a variety of channels to facilitate discussions and interactions, including text channels, discussion forums and voice channels. We also hold regular informal catch ups and science discussion ‘hangouts’.
Europlanet is committed to building a diverse, inclusive planetary science and ensuring that individuals within that community experience equal opportunity, regardless of gender, disability, ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marital status, age, nationality or socioeconomic background. The Europlanet Diversity Committee acts as a strategic task force to advise, coordinate and champion activities across Europlanet that further the association’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusivity. As well as activities around EPSC, the Diversity Committee organises events to raise awareness of diversity, inclusivity and accessibility in the planetary community, such as through the Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon.
Outreach and education have been a core part of Europlanet initiatives since its foundation the early 2000s. Our objective is to support the planetary science community at a grass roots level to do more public engagement and educational activities, and to share best practice, training and resources to increase the impact of those efforts. Over 20 public engagement and education projects have been supported with more than 135,000€ of seed funding by Europlanet.
The Outreach Working Group coordinates activities, such as EPSC Goes Live for Schools, funding programmes, sharing of best practice and the annual prize for Public Engagement.
Europlanet engagement with policy makers and industry aim to build collaborations and create synergies between cutting-edge science and the technological challenges of planetary science and exploration.
Europlanet has organised and participated in briefings, events, conference sessions (e.g. at EPSC) and other opportunities to engage policy makers in the European Parliament and the European Commission with planetary science, as well as engage with high-level representatives of ESA, NASA and other national and international space agencies. Organising events within the European Parliament has proved an effective platform to develop relationships with MEPs and other stakeholders, enabling the community to feed into discussions on future funding and policies relevant to planetary science.
Industry engagement activities have included organising technology foresight workshops, collaborations with space industry trade associations, developing contacts and networks within industry, participating in industry conferences and events, and convening industry and policy sessions at EPSC.
Europlanet’s distributed infrastructure offers industrial partners access to simulation and testing facilities for a range of environments that planetary and space missions may encounter through launch to their destination in orbit or on a planetary surface. By accessing Europlanet facilities, companies and SMEs can increase the value of their technology by increasing the Technology Readiness Level (TRL), understanding how instrumentation operates under realistic planetary conditions, or by identifying potential issues. Several of our RTI facilities are operated by commercial organisations.
Collaborations stimulated through Europlanet, and involving its beneficiaries, have led to several successful proposals for new projects funded through the European Commission and national agencies. From the development of Machine Learning tools to mobilising researchers in Africa, these external projects act as multipliers for the impact of Europlanet in many different communities.
Europlanet’s Expert Exchange Programme aims to support the mobilisation of the planetary community to share expertise and best practice and to prepare new facilities and services for integration into Europlanet’s research infrastructure. The programme provides funding for short visits (up to one week) and over the last two decades, more than 200 expert exchanges have been supported.
Topics for visits have included training on the use of instrumentation, short scientific projects, improvements to facilities and the development of outreach collaborations. Evaluation of the visits show that bringing individuals together to exchange expertise often leading to synergies that would not happen otherwise, particularly for researchers from under-represented countries. The programme has also supported the professional development of early career scientists, helping them to prepare for careers outside academia.
Europlanet offers funding and bursaries to support the community in various ways. Each year, we provide over 100 bursaries for early career and researchers from under-represented countries to attend EPSC. The Committee Funding Scheme offers grants of up to 5000 € to support the scientific, community-building and outreach activities of our members.
Europlanet recognises the contributions of the planetary science community through a range of medals, prizes and other awards. The Europlanet Medals, launched in 2025, honour outstanding contributions from individuals of three different scientific career-stages to the subjects covered by the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC). The Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement with Planetary Science is also awarded to individuals or groups who have developed innovative and socially impactful practices in planetary science communication and education. The EPSC Outstanding Poster Competition recognises the work of early career researchers at EPSC.
Europlanet activities are evaluated against a framework of core indicators for assessing scientific, technological, education and training, economic, and social and societal impacts. Evaluation shows that the impact of activities to date have been particularly strong in the scientific, technological, education and training areas.
The 197 Transnational Access projects supported through the most-recent Europlanet 2024 RI project are expected to lead to over 300 publications and 400 conference presentations. Interviews and follow-up surveys show that over 90% of visitors are planning future collaborations with their host facility. In particular, early career researchers and students report that the TA programme provides them with opportunities – including collaboration and network-building – that would not otherwise have been available to them, thus accelerating their career development.
Upgrades to facilities have provided increasing support for local infrastructure and associated employment, and there has been at least one SME company that was developed as a result of the TA programme.
The new Europlanet Evaluation Unit now offers evaluation support and consultancy for external organisations that would like to develop an evaluation framework or implement an impact evaluation of their activities.
Europlanet’s existence and continued activities would not be possible without the support of many individuals and organisations. In particular, we would like to thank our Executive Board, Committees and Working Groups for their huge investment of time and energy in making Europlanet a thriving and vibrant community. We thank our individual and organisational members for supporting us and participating in our activities. We are also indebted to the European Commission for funding over the years, as well as our project officers at the EC for their support, guidance and advice.
Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.
Researchers from the University of Bern have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model capable of predicting the architecture of planetary systems and subsequently inferring the presence of yet-to-be-discovered planets. They use the so-called Transformer architecture which is the basis of the Large Language Models powering tools like the recently launched Swiss model Apertus or chatbots such as ChatGPT. The findings have been presented this week at the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences (EPSC-DPS) 2025 in Helsinki.
For more than two decades, researchers at the University of Bern have developed the so-called ‘Bern model’, a suite of computer programs that can numerically simulate the formation of planetary systems, thus shedding light on system architecture. These models are, however, very complex: each simulation from the Bern model can take a few days to a few weeks to be computed using modern super-computers.
Using modern AI techniques trained on the Bern model data, Prof. Yann Alibert and Sara Marques from the NCCR PlanetS and the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern, and Dr. Jeanne Davoult, former PhD student of the University of Bern and now researcher at the DLR in Berlin, have developed an AI model capable of computing the formation of planetary systems in seconds, a million times faster than traditional computations. The study has just been published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and was also presented last week at the ‘Fast Machine Learning for Science’ conference in Zurich.
Present day and near future observational facilities will soon be able to observe and characterize extrasolar planets similar to the Earth, while they so far have been limited to planets closer to their host stars. “Earth-like planet detection requires large amount of observing time. In this context, knowing where to observe is very important to save very costly observation time”, explains Yann Alibert, first author of the study.
In order to prioritize between different possible targets, one can use the observations of easier-to-observe other planets in the same systems. This, however, requires a profound understanding of the so-called architecture of a system: how the properties (orbital position, mass, etc.) of one planet in a system relate to the properties of other planets in the same system.
The team trained its AI model on tens of thousands of numerical simulations of planetary system formation also developed at the University of Bern. “The new AI model can be used to predict the presence and properties of yet-to-be-discovered additional planets in already known extrasolar planetary systems”, as Sara Marques, PhD student at the University of Bern, points out.
In an experiment presented in the current study, the authors showed that in a real three-planet system, the properties of the second and third planet can be inferred from the properties of the innermost planet of the system. Alibert explains: “This approach can be used to generate new planetary systems: Knowing a single planet in a system, we can predict the rest of the planets for systems of three planets with our model.” Alibert continues: “The key in our study was to realize that planetary systems can be seen as sequences of planets, exactly as sentences are sequences of words. This triggered the idea of using the AI methods from Large Language Models, used for instance by chatbots such as ChatGPT, to build our AI model.”
The authors used the so-called ‘Transformer architecture’ introduced in the field in 2017 to create a generative model that can produce sequences of planets orbiting the same stars. “The Large Language Models predict the rest of a sentence based on the sequence created by the first few words. In our case, we predict the sequence of outer planets in a system, based on the first inner ones,” further explains Marques.
“This new study builds upon a previous AI model encouraging results,” points out Dr. Jeanne Davoult, former student in the NCCR PlanetS, now working at the DLR Berlin. “In the last model, based on the inner planet of a system, we were predicting the probability of an Earth-like planet to be in the system. Keeping the analogy with language models, it was like predicting the presence of a specific word in a sentence, based on its beginning. In this new study, we predict all the rest of the sentence and not only the probability of a single word.”
“The results of the generative AI model were so accurate that we were very skeptical at first,” remembers Marques. A large range of tests were made by the researchers, in which they used machine learning classifiers, and they submitted their results to other scientists. “In the end, they all concluded the same: generated planetary systems are virtually indistinguishable from numerical simulations,” continues Marques.
Scheduled to be launched in 2026, the ESA PLATO mission will discover thousands of planetary systems, with the planet closest to the star being, in general, the first to be observed. Some of these systems could harbor planets like the Earth, yet these will likely be discovered by ground-based telescope using other observations later.
“Our new AI model could be used to prioritize the observations of these systems by telescope, enhancing the probability to find Earth twins”, says Davoult. In the coming years, the models will be extended to predict more properties of planets, such as their composition or habitability. “When I was hired as a postdoc in 2001, I initiated numerical simulations of planetary systems at the University of Bern. This new AI model is the natural continuation of this Bernese expertise”, says Alibert. “AI is now present in everyone’s life, I am convinced it will more and more be key in scientific discoveries, in planetary sciences and elsewhere”, he concludes.
Publication details:Alibert, Y, Davoult, J., Marques, S., 2025, A transformer-based generative model for planetary systems, Astronomy and Astrophysics.
URL: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa52297-24/aa52297-24.html
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202452297
Contacts
EPSC–DPS 2025 Press Office
press@europlanet.org
About the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division of Planetary Sciences (EPSC-DPS)
The Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC), established in 2006 as the European Planetary Science Congress, is the largest planetary science meeting in Europe. It covers the entire range of planetary sciences, with an extensive mix of talks, workshops and poster sessions, as well as providing a unique space for networking and exchanges of experiences.
EPSC joined forces for the first time with the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) for a joint meeting in Nantes, France, in 2011. This was followed by DPS-EPSC 2016 in Pasadena, EPSC-DPS 2019 in Geneva, and the return to the United States for the DPS-EPSC 2023 meeting in San Antonio. This year will mark the third iteration of a joint European-based meeting. The intent of the joint meetings is not only to connect the European and North American planetary science communities, but also to consolidate two major meetings and motivate planetary scientists from all over the globe to attend. With around 1800 participants expected to join in person and online, EPSC-DPS2025 will be the largest planetary science meeting held to date in Europe.
Follow on social media (Bluesky, X and LinkedIn) with the hashtag #EPSC-DPS2025 for updates on the meeting.
About Europlanet
Europlanet (europlanet.org) is a non-profit association and membership organisation that provides the planetary science community with access to research infrastructure, services and training. The Europlanet Association Sans But Lucratif (AISBL), established in 2023, builds on the heritage of a series of projects funded by the European Commission between 2005 and 2024 (Grant Numbers 871149, 654208, 228319 and RICA-CT-2004-001637) to support the planetary science community in Europe and around the world.
About the DPS
The Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS), founded in 1968, is the largest special-interest Division of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Members of the DPS study the bodies of our own solar system, from planets and moons to comets and asteroids, and all other solar-system objects and processes. With the discovery that planets exist around other stars, the DPS has expanded its scope to include the study of extrasolar planetary systems as well. The American Astronomical Society (AAS), established in 1899, is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America. The mission of the AAS is to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community, which it achieves through publishing, meeting organization, science advocacy, education and outreach, and training and professional development.
Statements can be made about how a planet was formed and how it has evolved using the “Bern Model of Planet Formation and Evolution”. The Bern model has been continuously developed at the University of Bern since 2001. Insights into the manifold processes involved in the formation and evolution of planets are integrated into the model. These are, for example, sub models of accretion (growth of a planet’s core) or of how planets interact gravitationally and influence each other, and of processes in the protoplanetary disks in which planets are formed. The model is also used to create so-called population syntheses, which show how often planets form in a protoplanetary disk under certain conditions.
With the world’s elite since the first moon landingWhen the second man, “Buzz” Aldrin, stepped out of the lunar module on July 21, 1969, the first task he did was to set up the Bernese Solar Wind Composition experiment (SWC) also known as the “solar wind sail” by planting it in the ground of the moon, even before the American flag. This experiment, which was planned, built and the results analyzed by Prof. Dr. Johannes Geiss and his team from the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, was the first great highlight in the history of Bernese space exploration.Ever since Bernese space exploration has been among the world’s elite, and the University of Bern has been participating in space missions of the major space organizations, such as ESA, NASA, and JAXA. With CHEOPS the University of Bern shares responsibility with ESA for a whole mission. In addition, Bernese researchers are among the world leaders when it comes to models and simulations of the formation and development of planets.The successful work of the Space Research and Planetary Sciences Division (WP) from the Physics Institute of the University of Bern was consolidated by the foundation of a university competence center, the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH). The Swiss National Fund also awarded the University of Bern the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, which it manages together with the University of Geneva.
The Ariel Data Challenge, a global competition focused on advancing research in space science and exoplanets, has concluded its 2024 round with remarkable results.
The Data Challenge offers participants an opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research in the fascinating field of exoplanet atmospheres. Each year, the challenge focuses on a different problem related to the Ariel mission and space science. This year’s challenge focused on overcoming various noise sources, such as “jitter noise” caused by spacecraft vibrations, which can complicate the analysis of spectroscopic data used to study exoplanet atmospheres.
The 2024 edition attracted 1,414 participants, based in 75 countries around the world, who competed for the $50,000 prize pool. Over the course of three months, the participants generated a remarkable 23,024 submissions, averaging more than 200 submissions per day.
In an impressive field of competitors, six teams distinguished themselves:
1st Place: Kohki Horie (PhD student) and Yamato Arai (Master’s student) from the University of Tokyo (Team c-number + daiwakun)
2nd Place: Jeroen Cottaar, Data Scientist at ASML (Team Jeroen Cottaar)
3rd Place: Vincent Debout and Sébastien Goulet from CS Group (Team Space Coder)
4th Place: Shlomo Ron (Team greySnow)
5th Place: Team Youri + Pascal
6th Place: Dmitrii Rudenko from LMU Munich (Team Through the Thorns to the Star)
Most of the winning teams will be presenting their solutions at the prestigious NeurIPS 2024 conference on December 14th, 2024.
This groundbreaking challenge was made possible through a collaborative effort led by the UCL Centre for Space Exochemistry Data, bringing together an impressive international team of academic partners including the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, Cardiff University, Sapienza Università di Roma, and the Institut Astrophysique de Paris (Sorbonne Université, CNRS).
The Ariel Data Challenge 2024 was generously sponsored by the Kaggle Competitions Research Program and the Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales. The competition also benefited from the support of a consortium of leading space agencies and institutions, including the UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Europlanet Society, STFC RAL Space, and STFC DiRAC HPC Facility.
Ariel Data Challenge Lead, Dr Gordon (Kai Hou) Yip said, “I want to give a big shout-out to our winners who really stood out in this intense competition. I can’t thank everyone enough who put in their time and energy over these past three months. Your work is what helps us break new ground in data analysis and really push the envelope of what we can achieve in this field. ”
The Ariel Data Challenge 2024 represents a significant milestone in the ongoing efforts of the Ariel Mission to explore and understand the complex environments of exoplanets, paving the way for future breakthroughs in this dynamic field of space exploration.
The Ariel Data Challenge 2024 is calling all data scientists, astronomers, and AI enthusiasts to help tackle one of astronomy’s most complex and important data analysis problems—extracting faint exoplanetary signals from noisy space telescope observations.
The NeurIPS 2024, a world-renowned machine learning conference, will feature an exciting competition based on the Ariel Space Mission. This contest offers participants a unique chance to contribute to cutting-edge research in the fascinating field of exoplanet atmospheres. With a substantial prize pool of $50,000 USD at stake, the competition aims to attract top talent and innovative solutions.
Europlanet’s sister-project, EXPLORE, has been funded by the European Commission to develop Machine Learning and advanced visualisation tools to support the astronomy and planetary communities. One of the real strengths of the EXPLORE project is the diverse skills-set of the team. As the project comes to a close, we’ve asked people working on the project to reflect on their careers, their inspirations and the advice that they would pass on. Click on the images below to read their career profiles. If they look familiar, many of the team are also part of the Europlanet 2024 RI project’s GMAP activity and comms team.
We have produced an edited set of the profiles for download:
EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.
Name: Iain McDonald
EXPLORE Project Role: Lead developer of S-Phot Stellar Scientific Data Application
Professional Role and Affiliation: Research Fellow, University of Manchester
Nationality: British
Current location: Scotland
I didn’t really have a clue, but I’d just learned to programme and I guessed it would involve computers.
Unsurprisingly, physics!
I studied astrophysics at St. Andrews. I had always had a passion for astronomy, space and writing, and a career in astrophysics let me combine the three. I chose St. Andrews because it was the closest university, meaning I could still help out on the family farm when I had a break.
I am still in my first “real” job, which was a fortunate combination of my examiner needing a researcher at the same time I was finishing my PhD. My role and research has changed throughout the years, and I have had other jobs at the same time, but I’ve been fortunate to have been in this job for over 14 years.
I never expected to research the diversity of science I do today. Branching out from stars into discovering exoplanets isn’t that unusual, but I would never have guessed that I’d be publishing textbooks on genetic genealogy and papers in medieval history journals!
I owe a great debt of gratitude to too many people to mention by name. Whether that’s been someone who has proof-read my latest fellowship proposal, or someone who has sorted out my travel problems when I’m stuck in another country, or being taught how to correctly deal with liquid nitrogen or read an autocue. I am grateful to work in a very friendly community who are supportive of each other.
Poke computers until they do what I want them to. That might be programming a new form of analysis, making plots to examine data, or writing papers.
The best part of my job are still the occasional times I get to spend the night observing on top of some remote mountaintop in an exciting part of the world. More often, I still get excited about looking through a fresh set of data and seeing parts of how the Universe works that no-one has seen before. The worst part is needing the patience to analyse this new data rigorously – I always want to write up my papers quickly at tell the world what I’ve found.
There are so many different things I would like to do but don’t have the time for. There are many details of the Universe that I would like to uncover, I would like to create a better model for how humans have migrated across the globe, I’d like to climb every mountain, learn to play the clarinet and buy a farm of my own. But the most important thing I will do over the next few years is bring up a family!
Push yourself to try more things and get better at them. The more things you try, the more things you’ll like, and you never know when those things will become useful to you in the future. And don’t be so hard on the people who tell you to do your homework – they really do have your best interests at heart!
Quick CV
EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.
Name: Lian Greijn
EXPLORE Project Role: Intern
Professional Role and Affiliation: Intern at Acri-ST & MSc student Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft
Nationality: Dutch
Current location: Toulouse, France.
For a long time, I wanted to become a judge. However, when I was old enough to learn how monotone judicial texts are I quickly abandoned that dream.
My favourite subject was history, I really like reading and I enjoyed how it offers a perspective on how past events shape our modern world.
I am still studying and in my final year for my MSc in aerospace engineering, I also completed my BSc in this field both at TU Delft. I always had a big passion for space and was very intrigued by the complexity of space missions. They have such challenging design criteria and really push the boundaries of engineering, I wanted to learn more about how we design and develop them. I chose Delft because it has a very strong international aerospace programme.
I am of course still studying and haven’t had my first ‘real’ job yet, but I found this internship by asking around a lot in my university. For example, by approaching professors, the alumni relation office, and people I met through career events.
I was very adamant about going to Toulouse for my internship due to the strong aerospace industry in this city and because I studied French for a semester. It is however quite tough to find a position from abroad especially as a non-native French speaker. I had found an alumnus of my university who worked here and asked if he could help me. He happened to approach my current supervisor at their kid’s schoolyard to ask if he would know a position, which is what got me on this project.
I have been inspired by almost everyone I worked with. I think working together on assignments or just discussing problems can really help with thinking outside the box and with motivation in general.
As part of the project, I mostly spend my day programming in Python (and therefore also a lot of time googling issues). I also spend a bit of time working on public outreach, such as editing video tutorials.
I really enjoy the required creativity and problem solving that comes with programming. You constantly find a new issue and try to figure out how to solve it. Sometimes tasks seem very daunting at the start, but when you manage to solve it, it is very rewarding.
What I like least is probably that most of the work is done just sitting behind a computer, I would love to move a little more and have a bit more of a change in scenery.
Mostly to graduate next year!
A bit cliché but I would say to just enjoy life as a kid. I would also tell myself that I am not nearly as bad at maths as I like to make myself believe.
Quick CV
EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.
Name: Giacomo Nodjoumi
EXPLORE Project Role: Co-leader of the development of L-EXPLO and L-HEX Lunar Scientific Data Applications
Professional Role and Affiliation: PhD Candidate, Constructor University
Nationality: Italian
Current location: Bremen, Germany.
Space game developer, professional bass player, fighter jet pilot/astronaut… I had too many different interests and dreams.
Natural Sciences and informatics were the most interesting for me. But I also enjoyed chemistry and English. I really disliked humanities; now I regret that I was not more interested in those fields.
Both my Bachelor’s and Master’s were in geology, so I mainly studies scientific fields, from chemistry to petrography and so on. My Master’z was focused on engineering geology and risk assessment and management, so the topics shifted a bit to more practical problems for risk assessment and mitigation, such as slope stability or geophysics, remote sensing and so on.
I chose these subjects for the love of natural sciences, and the desire to know more about our Earth. The Master’s was chosen essentially for the course in remote sensing (feeding my nerdy side).
My Master’s thesis supervisor offered me one, since I made a working prototype of a multi-camera instrument for monitoring landslide. I’ve had two jobs including my actual position. The first one in the company of my supervisor, but it lasted only for three months, it was not fulfilling my expectations.
A colleague and close friend, aware of my passion for remote sensing and space, put me in contact with my current PhD supervisor. Since I always thought that working in planetary science was impossible for me, it was a life-changing event, especially since I had to move to another country for longer periods of time. The ‘surprise twist’ (even if I would describe it as a very, very biggest piece of bad luck for the whole world) was that the Covid-19 pandemic started almost immediately after my arrival in Bremen.
No one in particular, maybe Baden-Powell (founder of the Scout Movement) inspired me in my “youth days”, but since then I’d say that any person that I met, lived with, or worked with, left me some sort of lesson which helped me grow up in different aspects of my life.
One of Baden-Powell’s mottos, ‘Estote Parati,’ which translates to ‘Be Prepared’ in English, inspired me to be ready for everyday challenges. Additionally, a point of the Scout’s Law, “A Scout’s duty is to be useful and to help others”, motivated me to strive to be a better person.
Drink coffee, analyse planetary data, develop Python tools, read scientific papers, write papers for my PhD, keep updated with trending technologies and – last but not least – drink more coffee!
I really like the fact that I am pursuing almost all my passions, even if it can be very stressful and challenging.
I would like to continue developing something that may help future generations that wants to join the planetary science community.
I know that may sounds a classic answer but “Listen to your mother, think less, enjoy life more, and do more exercises!”
Quick CV
EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.
Name: Angelo Pio Rossi
EXPLORE Project Role: Lead developer of the L-EXPLO and L-HEX Lunar Scientific Data Applications
Professional Role and Affiliation: Professor of Earth and Planetary Science, Constructor University
Nationality: Italian
Current location: Bremen, Germany.
Oscillating in between a coroner, an archaeologist, and a fossil (or mineral) hunter. I realised later a geologist is a bit of all of them. And medicine was not my thing anyway.
Natural sciences, and later Latin and Earth Sciences. Old dead things, mostly.
I studied geology. I went through my high school years forgetting my childhood’s visceral attraction to geology, and somehow it came out again in the end. There was a geoscience program just started (the department was founded just 2-3 years before) in a nearby city, and I enrolled. That was it.
A PhD stipend perhaps does not quite qualify as job, but in the years I was doing my PhD, I also worked for a little while as a surveyor for the Italian geological mapping programme, as a new edition of the local systematic geological map was being prepared. Funnily enough, back then we were experimenting with digital mapping. Only, technology was not like now (digital mapping with tablets is nowadays quite normal): we had clunky devices, and obscure software that I goofily adapted from something developed by USGS in Alaska (and actually kindly provided by them).
I was then at ESA in the Netherlands for some years, then at ISSI in Switzerland, and at Constructor (formerly Jacobs University) for the last decade.
To be honest I had many lucks, but none uniquely shaped my career. They did shape my view on things, though. Since you ask, let me try and recall a small selection:
Yes, very much. I have a few. First and foremost my late palaeontology professor from my undergraduate times: Giovanni Jack Pallini. Then, many years later, the late Johannes Geiss, who was a legend and the funniest and most – gently – iconoclastic scientist I have ever met. And Roger Maurice Bonnet, who is one of the most elegant leaders I recall (plus, decades later, we still chew planetary missions he has made possible…). They helped me through their example, not just with words… with things adsorbed, and not necessarily realised immediately.
Curse my two cats jumping on my laptop while I work, or dipping their paws into my cup of tea.
I prefer to answer to this question next year 😉 But if you really insist: to learn and explore new things.
Quick CV
EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.
Name: Javier Eduardo Suárez Valencia
EXPLORE Project Role: Researcher on the L-EXPLO and L-HEX Lunar Scientific Data Applications
Professional Role and Affiliation: PhD Candidate in Planetary Science at Constructor University.
Nationality: Colombian
Current location: Bremen, Germany
I wanted to be an astronaut, especially to go to different planets.
Biology.
Geology. I choose it because there was not an astronomy program in my country, and geology was still a really interesting natural science. Eventually, I was able to link the two.
My first job was as a risk management geologist, doing maps for a location in Colombia. Since then, I had two other jobs.
To start my PhD in Bremen Germany. I always worked in planetary science just for passion, but now I can make a living from it.
Yes, another Colombian geologist, Fabian Saavedra. He showed me that we can study other planets – my professor did not have any idea of how to do that.
Working in my PhD, advising students in Colombia, reading.
What I most enjoy is looking at spatial data of planetary surfaces to understand its geology. I do not enjoy debugging code!
I want to be a university professor in a Colombian university.
The Universe is big and full of wonders. No matter what happens do not lose your curiosity to learn from it!
Quick CV
EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.
Name: Albert Zijlstra
EXPLORE Project Role: Lead Developer of the EXPLORE Stellar Scientific Data Applications
Professional Role and Affiliation: Professor of Astrophysics, The University of Manchester, UK
Nationality: Dutch
Current location: Manchester, UK
Undecided, I think! I was already very interested in astronomy, perhaps in part because of the Apollo landings but a future job was too far in the future.
I studied mainly the sciences. Other topics were dropped as soon as it was allowed. It was required to study at least two languages for the final exams, but that was the only non-science I kept!
I went to the closest university, as the first one from the family to go there. I studied astrophysics. This largely follows the physics curriculum, so it was possible to do something I was really interested in without having to worry about employability.
After my undergraduate degree, I was able to go the US on a junior research position, which became part of my PhD. I have worked in quite a few places, both academia and industry, involving 5 different continents.
I have never done career planning so all positions I have held have involved chance or ‘luck’. I worked in South Africa for a year and can say that I have seen Mandela in person on the day he was release. That was quite a year.
I have learned from several supervisors and colleagues. There isn’t a single mentor but every time you move to a new place, you’ll find new ways and methods for doing science. It is important to make use of those opportunities and not just keep doing the same things.
Every day is different. There may be teaching to do, in large lectures, small groups or face to face. There are new papers to read on the latest research and of course there is my own research to work on, almost always in international collaborations. Every day is a learning experience.
The work is great. The teaching is rewarding and the research is exciting. On the other hand, the work pressure can be very high and this has become worse since Covid. You have to be careful with your mental health.
Not really. I will see what comes next!
Not to worry. Everyone is different and everyone has a place. Just do what you are good at and enjoy!
Quick CV
Name: Nick Cox
EXPLORE Project Role: Project Manager
Professional Role and Affiliation: ACRI-ST, Research Engineer
Nationality: Dutch
Current location: Toulouse, France
Already then, I was not very decided on what I wanted to be, and several professions caught my fancy,from being a chartered accountant (I liked numbers), an astronaut (the night sky was fascinating) to being a professional brick builder (the Danish kind of brick) ????.
I don’t think I had a single favourite subject in high-school. I liked chemistry because of the hands-on experiments but also mathematics and economics (especially how it tried to capture the real world in numbers and equations). I also liked drawing and (practical) design to nurture my creative mind.
After much deliberation I decided, at the last minute, to study astrophysics in Utrecht (Netherlands). At the time the curriculum in Utrecht was quite broad with electives in astronomy, geophysics, oceanography, computing, experimental physics, and physical chemistry. I also thought it would be challenging and give me good career prospects. Out of curiosity I did a minor in chemistry, but finally I chose to stick with astrophysics for my master’s degree.
My first real job, after doing some temp work, was as a junior researcher/doctoral candidate. I wasn’t particularly looking to do a doctoral thesis when I stumbled upon a vacancy for an interesting research project (astronomy with a pinch of chemistry!). Since then I’ve had several academic jobs in Europe (notably Spain, Belgium, and France) before joining the company I work at currently.
After my doctoral thesis I was looking to stay in the Netherlands, and I applied for a fellowship at ESA/ESTEC (Netherlands). I did not get accepted for that position but was offered instead a position at ESA/ESAC near Madrid, Spain. This unexpected twist started my adventures abroad.
Many persons inspired me throughout my academic journey. I have had amazing supervisors for my doctoral project, but also for my other academic posts. I learned different things from each of them, all making me a better scientist, but also a better teacher, and hopefully a better project manager ????.
I work mostly in the office, but I get to travel several times a year for project meetings or conferences (even though many meetings are now held online). Each day I typically spend some time to read and write emails, and do some admin. The larger part of the day I work on project tasks – with usually two or more projects running in parallel. Typical tasks are coding, data processing and analysis, writing and reviewing documents and articles, reading papers, preparing and holding meetings with colleagues, project partners and students.
It is very gratifying to work on a code and, after many mistakes, make it work. I also like the travel part of the job, to see new cities and places, and meet colleagues/friends from all over the world. As a researcher / R&D engineer I’m continuously researching and learning new ideas and topics.
One of things that can be sometimes frustrating as a project manager is to need to chase people to answer questions or deliver inputs (but of course for the EXPLORE project this is never needed with all those amazing partners in the consortium ????).
For EXPLORE one of our ambitions is to further exploit the science platform we developed and to improve and create new scientific apps. Also, I’d like to create a start-up someday.
Follow your heart, but don’t entirely ignore your brain, to learn and work on what you find most interesting. Don’t be afraid of change, dreams evolve with time.
Quick CV
Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.
Europlanet AISBL (Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif – 0800.634.634) is hosted by the Department of Planetary Atmospheres of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Avenue Circulaire 3, B-1180 Brussels, Belgium.