The "L’Oréal-UNESCO Young Talents for Women in Science" prize rewards each year 35 doctoral and post-doctoral students in France, in order to support their research projects and give them visibility.
Among this year’s laureates, Léa Bonnefoy, doctoral student and Lucie Leboulleux, post-doctoral student, both from the Laboratory of Space Studies and Instrumentation in Astrophysics of Paris Observatory - PSL are awarded this prestigious prize.
Lucie Leboulleux
After internships at the Mount Wilson Observatory (California) and the Gemini South Telescope (Chile), Lucie defended a thesis between the Space Telescope Science Institute (Maryland) and the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in 2018.
Since then, she joined the Paris Observatory - PSL where she continues her research work which consists in developing analytical models to design instruments dedicated to exoplanet imaging.
These ambitious projects are intended to equip European telescopes of the ESO (European Southern Observatory) such as the Very Large Telescope or the future Extremely Large Telescope of 38 m in diameter. The latter could make it possible to image exoplanets as small as the Earth.
In addition to the numerical aspects, Lucie worked in the laboratory on a high contrast imaging bench at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Very involved in the diffusion of science to the general public, she has also set up several partnerships with artists as well as with the École de Design Nantes-Atlantique in order to use the artistic medium as a vector for scientific content.
Lea Bonnefoy
Léa has just finished her thesis entitled Microwave Thermal Emission from Saturn’s Icy Moons which she defended on September 18, 2020.
The satellites without Saturn’s atmosphere have experienced divergent evolutions linked in particular to their close environment (position in Saturn’s magnetosphere, interaction with dust rings etc.). Part of this history is contained in their ice regolith and one way to access it is to measure their thermal emission in the microwave domain.
Using data from the Cassini Radar/radiometer and observations from terrestrial radio telescopes, the objective of his thesis was to characterize the composition and structure of the subsurfaces of the icy satellites of Saturn, in particular Rhea, Dione and Japet, the three largest Saturnian satellites after Titan.
The study of the intra- (in particular between the front and back faces of these synchronous satellites) and inter-satellite variations of these properties informs us about the processes that shape these icy surfaces.
A total of 10 young researchers from PSL received one of this year’s 35 awards. :
A big bravo to all of them ! |
