Benjamin Charnay is one of 48 researchers to win a CNRS bronze medal in 2024.
The bronze medal "recognizes the first consecrating works of researchers who are specialists in their field", by way of encouragement "to pursue research that is well underway and already fruitful".
After winning in 2023 the young researcher prize of the Société Française d’Exobiologie, Benjamin Charnay is once again recognized for his expertise in modeling planetary atmospheres, with exoplanets, the primitive Earth and Titan as his main subjects of study.
This new award reaffirms the interest shown by the research community in his work.
Trajectory
Benjamin Charnay first became interested in the climates of Titan and primitive Earth during his PhD thesis defended in 2014, before turning to exoplanets. To this end, he contributed to the development of a generic 3-D planetary climate model.
Since joining the Laboratoire d’études spatiales et d’instrumentation en astrophysique de l’Observatoire de Paris - PSL, first as a post-doc, then as a CNRS research fellow in 2018, he has made a major contribution to the development and dissemination of a 1D radiative-convective atmosphere model, named Exo-REM.
Its major contribution is to take into account the formation of clouds and the modeling of their spectroscopic signatures.
Exo-REM is optimized for interpreting exoplanet observations with near- and mid-infrared instruments, from ground-based telescopes such as VLT-SPHERE or the James Webb Space Telescope.
The model has produced first-rate results for observations of both young, long-period exoplanets and short-period exoplanets irradiated by their star.
Perspectives
Benjamin Charnay aims to extend the capabilities of these two models, on the one hand by coupling the Exo-REM model with an indoor model, and on the other hand by including the treatment of clouds and photochemical haze in the generic 3-dimensional model. He is currently co-supervising two theses on these subjects.
Benjamin Charnay is also interested in future observations, notably those to be provided by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ARIEL satellite, scheduled for launch in 2029, and for which he is coordinating the phase curve working group.
In the longer term, his main interest lies in ground-based instruments and space missions that will focus on the study of temperate rocky exoplanets and the conditions for the emergence of life in the Universe.