IAA-CSIC - Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

Dr. Miguel Ángel López-Valverde is Staff scientist at IAA with over 20 years of experience in the research of planetary atmospheres. He has participated in the Science Teams of most of the Earth remote sounding missions of the upper atmosphere so far, including Nimbus-7, UARS, Timed and Envisat, with responsibilities in the analysis of IR emissions by atmospheric species and the retrieval of their abundances at high altitudes. He is currently Co-I of VIRTIS/VEx, with responsibility in the exploitation of upper atmospheric data and the derivation of densities and temperatures from fluorescent emissions. He is also Co-I of the NOMAD/ExoMars TGO, with interest in the understanding of the thermal structure and composition of the whole atmosphere, with focus on high altitude processes. He is also co-I of the Mars Climate Database project, where he is responsible of the middle and upper atmospheres physics and implementation into Mars General Circulation Models.
Miguel Ángel has experience in management of projects at PI and lead co-PI at national level (funded by Spanish National Plan for Research & Development, including the CONSOLIDER "excellence" program) and at international level (ESA Mars Climate Database project).

He coordinates the UPWARDS project and leads and coordinates the overall research of CSIC proposed under WP7 and WP9, related to the middle/upper atmosphere of Mars.

Dr. Francisco González-Galindo is a postdoctoral researcher at IAA-CSIC. His main field of research is the study of the upper atmosphere of the terrestrial planets by means of computational models (both 1D and 3D) and observations. He is a member of the development team of a state-of-the-art Global Climate Model for Mars, the LMD-MGCM. He has also participated in the analysis of observational datasets from different instruments (SPICAM, OMEGA, MARSIS and MaRS on board Mars Express, Radio Science on board Mars Global Surveyor, the accelerometers of Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter), with a special focus on the upper atmosphere of Mars.

He will analyze the UV atmospheric emissions in the dayside from SPICAM, and will develop a model to simulate them (WP7). He will also participate in the derivation of temperatures and densities in theupper atmosphere and in their comparison with those simulated by a global model.

Dr. Maya García-Comas is a Ramón y Cajal Research fellow at IAA-CSIC. She has almost 15 years of experience in the inversion of temperature and composition from IR instruments and in the chemistry, dynamics and energetics of the middle and upper atmosphere. She is responsible for the inversion of temperature, water vapour and other species from MIPAS/Envisat and played a key role in the development of algorithms and validation of SABER/TIMED data. She also has experience in aerosol measurement techniques and the determination of Martian dust optical properties, Martian water vapour retrievals from NIR nadir measurements and Titan's methane retrievals from NIR limb measurements. She works in the development of middle and upper atmospheric non-LTE models for Earth (H2O, CO2, O3), Mars (CO2), Titan (CH4) and Jupiter (CH4). She was Associate Scientist of HRSC/MEx. She was a support scientist of OMEGA/MEx. She belongs to the MIPAS/Envisat and SABER/TIMED Science Teams.
 
She participates in the application of generic non-LTE models to Mars and the interpretation of the IR data of OMEGA and PFS (WP 7).

Prof. Manuel López-Puertas is a Research Professor of CSIC at the IAA. He is leading the Group of the Atmospheres of the Terrestrial Planets at the IAA-CSIC. He has a long experience in the developments of non-LTE radiative transfer models and on the analysis of IR instruments observations of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets, Earth, Venus, Mars and Titan. These include the SAMS/Nimbus 7, ATMOS Spacelab3; ISAMS and CLAES on UARS; and more recently MIPAS/Envisat, SABER/TIMED, MEx/PFS and VIMS/Cassini. He is Co-I in the SABER/TIMED mission of NASA, in the NOMAD/EMTGO; and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of MIPAS/Envisat of ESA. He has also participated in three research projects of NASA, and is one of the main developers of the GRANADA algorithm and its application to planetary atmospheres. He received the NASA Group Achievement Award for the TIMED Team in 2008 and is member of the International Radiation Commission. He is author of a book and of more than 150 papers in SCI journals (citations >3200, H-index: 32).
 
Together with other team members, he is assessing the development of the algorithms retrievals of the temperature and composition from the PFS and Omega data (WP1), the analysis of the non-LTE emissions of the IR instrument on Mars/Express and in the interpretation and analysis of the data with the GCM (WP 7). He is a member of the Steering Board.

Prof. José J. López-Moreno is a Research Professor of CSIC at IAA. He has lead/is leading several successful planetary missions, including the HASI instrument for the Cassini/Huyghens mission to Titan, OSIRIS and GIADA of Rosetta. He is Co-I of PFS-MEx, PFS/VEx, and BELA-Bepi Colombo. He is currently the Co-PI of the NOMAD instrument for the ExoMars TGO mission.
 
Using his experience in modelling airglow, he will assess the inversion of temperature and density from the airglow measurements (WP7).

Dr. Bernd Funke is Staff scientist at IAA with 15-year experience in atmospheric remote sensing and non-LTE radiative transfer. He is responsible for MIPAS/ENVISAT NOx and CO data products and for the development of the Generic RAdiative traNsfer AnD non-LTE population algorithm (GRANADA). He contributed significantly to the development of the Karlsruhe Optimized and Precise Radiative transfer Algorithm (KOPRA) and the IMK/IAA MIPAS level 2 research processor. He is interested in the radiation, chemistry and dynamics of the atmosphere, and Sun-Earth connection and its effects on climate. He is Co-Chair of SPARC’s SOLARIS-HEPPA working group, Co-chair of ROSMIC Working group 1 (Solar impact on climate) of SCOSTEP’s VarSITI programme, and Coordinator of the HEPPA-I and HEPPA-II model-measurement intercomparison projects. Member of the International Commission of the Middle Atmosphere (ICMA), Co-Investigator of NOMAD ExoMars TGO. He is author of over 120 publications in SCI journals (citations >1900, H-index: 26).
 
He leads the development of the retrieval tool under non-LTE conditions in the middle/upper atmosphere (WP1) and will contribute to understanding the modelling of the IR emissions of OMEGA and PFS and the retrieval of densities from these emissions (WP7).

Sergio Jiménez-Monferrer is a full-time Ph.D at IAA-CSIC. He graduated in Telecommunication engineering by the Polytechnical University of Valencia and in Physics by the University of Valencia, obtaining then a Master's degree in Advanced Physics, speciality in Astrophysics by the University of Valencia. He has 5 years experience in research in radio astronomy (AGNs), and knowledge in computational techniques. He has also worked for a space company (INDRA), developing tools for radar space debris detectability and orbitology computation, for ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) project.

He will participate in the analysis of IR data, adaptation of the Non-LTE retrieval code to Martian conditions, retrieval of CO2 and CO densities from IR data, and interpretation with the LMD-MGCM (WP7).

Ana Tamayo is a journalist specialized in science communication. She has over 10-year experience in the communication field, working in different TV Channels, radio stations and press communication units. She has collaborated with the Communication and Outreach Unit at Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) in some of their projects such as the audiovisual scientific pieces El extraño caso de Henrietta Leavitt  or Los Teslablogs, as well as in the radio podcasts El radioscopio or A través del Universo.
 
She is responsible of the communication and outreach of the UPWARDS project (WP10)

Emilio Jose García Gómez-Caro is a member of the CSIC Communication and Outreach Unit at IAA. He has ample experience producing audiovisual scientific pieces (“El extraño caso de Henrietta Leavitt”), radio podcasts (“El Radioscopio”), scientific theatre (“Contacto Pelícano”) and television shows (“Antes de que Anochezca”). He coordinates different educational projects like PIIISA (Project to Introduce Research and Innovation into Secondary Schools in Andalucia), and lectures for students and general public. He is a member of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Communications and Outreach Group representing Spain.
 
He leads the dissemination of results and knowledge of UPWARDS (WP9)

Alicia Pelegrina López is an environmental scientist. Working over 12-years in project management, she has a wide experience with European Fundings Programmes in both public and private institutions. She has worked in different fields such as environmental education, rural development, environmental sustainability and protected areas management.
 
She is the project coordinator assistant of UPWARDS.