The Euclid Consortium has awarded the Euclid Consortium STAR 2024 prize, in the Senior Scientist category, to Jean-Charles Cuillandre, a researcher in the Astrophysics Department (DAp) of the IRFU at CEA Paris-Saclay, for his customized pipeline that generated Euclid’s magnificent “Early Release Observations” (ERO) public images, seen by billions of people, and kick-started the scientific exploitation of the data.
Jean-Charles Cuillandre is an astronomer based at the astrophysics department from CEA Paris-Saclay. He joined the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in 1996 after completing a PhD in astrophysics in Toulouse and spent nearly two decades in Hawai’i working for CFHT and its scientific communities as an instrument scientist and staff astronomer. Prior to engaging in the fundamental research world, he received a training in engineering as it fitted well his taste for astronomical data processing and instrumentation. His main field of expertise is wide-field optical and near-infrared imaging, from the detectors, observing techniques and data processing, up to the broad science enabled by such instrumentation, especially through the wide sky surveys. He returned to France within the DAp in 2014 to join the Euclid mission to contribute to the development of the survey plan and to spawn the international ground-based observations campaign critical to the mission. Using his free time to develop sky art based on wide-field imaging data from CFHT over the past two decades, he led the Euclid Early Release Observations (ERO) effort to deliver the first color images to the world, and support the production of the first science results.
Contact : Jean-Charles Cuillandre
Further information :
- The Euclid Consortium STAR Prize 2024
- Highlights of the first Euclid ERO images
- Highlights of the second series of Euclid ERO images and the first scientific results
- Jean-Charles Cuillandre on France Culture’s La Conversation Scientifique program: Will we soon know what “dark” energy is?
- Jean-Charles Cuillandre’s contribution to Le Blob: Deciphering the first images from Euclid, the telescope in search of dark matter