- Who am I?
a young instrumentation physicist currently working with Dr. Salvador Cuevas and Dr. Alan Watson (as a postdoc) at the Instituto de Astronomía (IA-UNAM) in Mexico. I defended my PhD thesis in october 2005 after 4 years of work at the CRAL/Observatoire de Lyon (France) with Dr. Renaud Foy.
- a brief autobio…. As I grew up always interested in Science and technology I directed myself into physics in College with a focus physical measurement and instrumental techniques. My undergraduate experience in France helped me build my interest in measuring physical processes by their understanding and the mastering of the instruments and methods used. Then I completed as Master’s Degree in Instrumentation Physics at the University of Utah (USA) which happened to be a coherent suite to my knowledge bases. There, I carried out a research project for the High Energy Cosmic Ray group lead by Dr. Sokolsky. Together with Dr. Lawrence Wiencke I built a fiber-optic based calibration system for a giant cosmic ray observatory using the air fluorescence technique (like Auger’s Extensive Air Showers Detectors). This was a very nice work and life experience that gave me a will to work in research and study towards a PhD. As I wanted to “touch” the rest of of astronomy, I completed a second Master’s Degree in astrophysics in Grenoble (France) and learned the bases in many astronomical fields such as Stellar formation & Evolution, interstellar matter, galactic dynamics, cosmology, high angular resolution techniques, etc. But I clearly wanted to work closely with instruments so I chose to achieve my final internship project on the testing of integrated optics components for interferometric beam merging (LAOG/IONIC Team, France). Then I was awarded a three year scholarship to pursue full time research in the AIRI team (Astronomy and Interferometric Resolution Imaging) at CRAL (Lyon, France) under the supervision of Dr. Renaud Foy. My PhD work was on the polychromatic laser guide star project ELPOA which aims at making AO (Adaptive Optics) possible at visible wavelengths with full sky coverage. In fact, Dr. Foy was the first (together with Dr. Labeyrie) in 1985 to propose the artificial laser reference star concept in astronomy…
- so what? I’d like to keep working as a postdoc, research associate, or engineer (in France or abroad). I want contribute to new astronomical instruments to provide better observation capabilities towards discoveries and a better understanding of what surrounds us!
I think that sciences and astronomy in particular aren’t completly useless in the society. I am more and more interested in public outreach and therefore I will try to provide interesting informations and links hereby.
