Our group

Head, Public Information Officer

• About Lars
• CV
• List of Publications
• Link to personal homepage
• Some of the stuff I have done.

Contact Lars.

Martin Kornmesser

Graphic designer

• About Martin
• Some other stuff he has done

Some of the tools he uses for graphics and video:

• 3D:
  • Maxon Cinema 4D 9.6
    • NET Render (used on our 20 Ghz Renderfarm)
  • Terragen v0.9
• Video:
  • Adobe After Effects 7
  • Adobe Premiere 2
  • Adobe Encore 2
  • Pinnacle Liquid "Silver"
  • Discreet Cleaner XL 6
• 2D:
  • Adobe Photoshop CS2
  • Corel Draw 12
  • Adobe InDesign CS2
  • Wacom Tablet
• Web:
  • Macromedia Flash 4
  • Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

Contact Martin.

Pedro Russo

IYA2009 Coordinator

He obtained his University degree in applied mathematics/physics/astronomy and his Master’s Degree in geophysics from the University of Porto, Portugal. Between 2000 and 2006 he worked as an astronomy communicator and content developer for Navegar Foundation in Espinho, Portugal. Before assuming his current position, as IAU Coordinator for IYA2009, he spent one year and half working with data from the Venus Monitoring Camera onboard ESA’s Venus Express. In the meanwhile Pedro has been working with different international organizations, like Europlanet (European Planetology Network), IAU Commission 55: Communicating Astronomy with the Public and EGU Earth and Space Science Informatics Division.

Contact Pedro

Raquel Yumi Shida

Web developer

Raquel obtained a degree in architecture and urban planning in 2005 at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. She is an amateur astronomer, has interned at the Astronomy Department at the University of São Paulo, at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore (USA) and at ESA/Hubble.

Contact Raquel

Lars Holm Nielsen

Leader, Advanced Projects Development

Lars obtained a Bachelor degree in computer science from Roskilde University in Denmark in 2007, and has also interned at the Business Optimization group in IBM Research Zürich. Besides working for ESA/Hubble, he is pursuing a Master degree in Mathematical Modelling and Computation at the Technical University of Denmark and is passionate hiker/skier.

• CV
• List of Publications
• Link to personal homepage

Contact Lars.

Mariana Barrosa

IYA2009 Coordination Assistant

Mariana supports the planning, coordination, preparation, implementation and revision of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, and other joint programming processes.

Contact Mariana.

Luis Clara Gomes

Software Developer on the Advanced Projects Development

Luis Clara Gomes obtained his degree in Computer and Telematics Engineering in the University of Aveiro in 2006, and did research on health information systems in the Electronic and Telematic Engineering Institute, Aveiro, where he obtained his MSc with a final thesis on a Brain-Computer Interface prototype. Later he was involved in medical 3D movement analysis in Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. He's also been involved in music software development, and is a hobbyist electronic musician.

www.ua.pt
www.ieeta.pt
myspace.com/moulinex

Contact Luis.

Nuno Marques (Osiriums Ventaka)

Intern, Graphic Design

Nuno is a Portuguese graphic and web designer interested in CSS (level 3), AJAX, flash, Adobe software and Corel Draw.

In his spare time he enjoys photography.

Laura Simurda

Intern, Science Writing

Laura will be working as a science writer for three months this summer (2008). She has obtained a Bachelors of Science degree in Astronomy and Bachelors of Arts degrees in Print Journalism and History from the University of Southern California. In the fall she will begin pursuing a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering and a Master of Arts degree in specialized journalism at USC.

Over the past two years she has conducted astronomical research with Dr. Geraldine Peters at USC, which she hopes to continue in the fall. Last summer she worked as a museum guide and science writing intern at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

Davide de Martin

Image Processing

Electrical engineer and amateur astronomer. He was born and lives in Venice, Italy. Ever since he was a child his main interest is astronomy. Since 1997, he has collaborated with the Italian astronomy magazine called "Coelum", he wrote dozens of columns and several articles in space exploration and spaceflight history. He has produced or taken part in several works in popular science, like websites and multimedia CD-ROMs. One of his most recent projects is the web site http://www.skyfactory.org

In 2005 he became part of the ESA/Hubble office.

Kaspar K. Nielsen

Software Developer and astrophysicist, Advanced Projects Development

Kaspar is doing his Master's Thesis in the field of numerical astrophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen University. He simulates complex astrophysical systems using computer clusters (multiple-CPU systems). At the moment he is trying to model the influence of the magnetic field in the
formation of planetary nebulae.

Link to CV.

Teis Johansen

Software developer on the Advanced Projects Development

Teis is an engineering student from the Technical University of Denmark in the field of electrical engineering. Teis is currently on the team designing the onboard computer for the next student satellite.

Contact Teis. 

Anne Rhodes

Proof reading

Anne has degrees in Physics from Oxford University and in Microwaves and Modern Optics from University College London. She has worked as a technical editor and research engineer, and more recently as a teacher of physics and mathematics in Germany and America. She began proofreading for ESA/Hubble on a freelance basis in 1998.

Polina Gedova

Distribution Assistant

Previous team members (see also this list)

James Long

Image Processing

When James was in grade 7, his science teacher presented a group of slides of stellar objects from ground based telescopes. Since then, he has had a passion for images from space. "Being part of a team that brings these types of images to others is absolutely wonderful", James says. He purchased his first computer at age 16, an Apple II ES. Currently, he lives in Renton, Washington USA (near Seattle) and is a computer programmer (C, C#, Java, Php and Javascript). He started working with 3D art in 1997 with Truespace 3 and has continured from there. He stumbled onto the FITS Liberator site from the ESA Hubble site, and started making images for personal use (just to look at them). Lars invited James to work with team in November of 2005.

Hobbies

• 3D Art
  • Terragen Lightwave
  • Vue 5 Infinite
  • Bryce
  • Truespace
• Writing
• Reading

Will Gater

Intern, Science Writing

Will joined HEIC in 2007 as part of a science communication internship with ESO/ESA and the ST-ECF after graduating in Astrophysics from University College London. He is a science writer based in the UK and has worked as News Editor for Astronomy Now magazine there. At HEIC he currently works on writing and editing news and photo releases for Hubble as well as writing scripts for the popular Hubblecast vodcast. You can see Will's publication list and read his blog on his website here .

Hosam Hassan

Student Developer

Hosam is studying for a Master's degree in Computational science and Engineering at the Technical University of Munich. He has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering and is a Sun certified Java programmer.

Julia Westner

Distribution Assistant

Julia is studying Cultural Anthropology, Japanese and Psychology in her second year at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.

Currently she is in charge of the Hubble Shop and responsible for all kinds of distribution matters concerning HEIC and PAD.

Ana Lopes

Intern, Science Writing

Ana left the golden flatland of Alentejo in southern Portugal and headed north to study Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. She then moved to the United States for about a year to complete her undergraduate thesis at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. She gained a D.Phil. in Astrophysics from Oxford University and conducted a post-doc at Universität Heidelberg. Ana joined ESA/Hubble as a science journalism intern in May 2007. She spends her time writing news and photo releases, as well as scripts for the Hubblecast.

Intern, graphic design

Francesca Granato is a professional graphic designer from London. After graduating in 2003 she completed a fellowship at Fabrica – the art studio behind the Benetton fashion house in northern Italy. Since then she has worked for various design studios and private clients in London. Highlights of her career so far, have included, being selected as a 2005 NESTA Creative Pioneer, and art-directing the branding of the UK’s first-ever Sex Museum. Currently Francesca is pursuing exciting branding projects with the NASA/ESA Space Telescope team in Garching near Munich, Germany.

Aitana Vargas

Intern, Science Communication

At the age of 18, Aitana was awarded a tennis scholarship to the US, which enabled her to finance her education in the States. She holds degrees in Physics and a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from the US and the UK respectively. During her undergrad studies, she conducted research in Astrophysics, Chemistry and Biology, and presented her work in conferences in the US and Canada. Before completing her education, Aitana worked as an anchorwoman for a local US television station delivering the weekly news in Spanish. Her experience in the media industry also encompasses having worked as a radio news producer for one of Spain’s top national stations, acted as a bilingual financial journalist and interned in CNN International and the BBC. While at the ESA/Hubble Information Center, she will be enhancing her science journalism skills.

Nadja Wolf

Intern, Science Communication

Nadja obtained her master in political science at Universität München, LMU in 2005. She is now doing postgraduate studies and working as a freelance for some journals and newspapers. At ESA/Hubble she is doing a journalistic internship in science communication.

Kristina Boneva

Intern, Graphic Design

Kristina is a bulgarian student of Jewellery and Gemstone Design in Germany. During her studies she especially enjoyed the course of photography, always had interests in the field of astronomy and october 2005 started as an intern in the Public Affairs Department of ESO, where she learned much about image processing and about astronomical data using the Fits Liberator Plug In. Since April she works for ESA/Hubble Space Telescope doing layout and increases her knowledge about image processing, graphics software and about working in a professional team. After her time at ESA, Kristina will work in a goldsmiths workshop in Munich until October 2006 and then will finish (2008) her last years of studying in Idar-Oberstein at the University of Applied Arts and Sciences Trier. There she will work on several projects for astro-inspired jewellery objects.

Brigitta Eder

Archive Maintenance

Brigitta studies astronomy at the Karl-Franzens-Universtaet Graz (http://www.uni-graz.at) and is currently working on her diploma thesis at the ST-ECF, dealing with data from the HST Advanced Camera for Surveys. After finishing her thesis this summer she will start her PhD at ESO in September 2006.

Previous 3D graphics intern Cornel Swoboda - not so innocent as he looks ...

Noel Carboni

Image Processing

Noel is a software engineer with 30 years experience, as well as a hobby photographer and astrophotographer. He owns ProDigital Software (http://www.ProDigitalSoftware.com), where he creates advanced tools for post-processing of astronomical and other images. His current projects include development of advanced noise reduction and sharpening software, modeling diffraction effects, and he's working on a collaborative book of fine art astrophotography called "Starscapes".

Some of the image processing equipment and software Noel uses:

• Dell 64 bit dual processor dual monitor Precision workstation
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• FITS Liberator
• Astronomy Tools Actions
• Focus Magic

You can read more about Noel at: http://ncarboni.home.att.net

You may contact Noel via eMail.

In 2006 he became part of the ESA/Hubble office.

Anne Værnholt Olesen

Educational Support

Anne has degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the university of Copenhagen. She is a teacher of those subjects as well as an amateur astronomer. She has worked with public outreach in a number of ways: writing popular science books and articles, been web master of the planetarium in Copenhagen, as well as heading a project at the university of Copenhagen with the aim of connecting the high school students with the university by offering the students a chance to visit the university and doing more advanced experiments than those usually possible at a high school. Last but not least Anne was instrumental in developing the ESA/ESO Astronomy Exercise Series.