Aikaterini Radioti

The 2012 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists is awarded to Aikaterini Radioti for her remarkable work in the field of auroral dynamics of Jupiter and Saturn, to which she contributed with original ideas based on combined studies of remote auroral and in‐situ magnetospheric data.

Aikaterini Radioti has contributed original ideas in the field of auroral dynamics of Jupiter and Saturn, based on combined studies of remote auroral and in-­situ magnetospheric data as well as the development and application of theoretical approaches on ionospheric-­magnetospheric coupling. For example:

• She was the first to demonstrate observationally and theoretically that periodic ejected plasma flow at the magnetic reconnection in Jupiter’s tail couples with the ionosphere and creates periodic auroral features.
• She showed that the plasma flow produced by consecutive reconnection events in the flank of Saturn’s magnetopause creates auroral emissions at the end of the ionospheric footprint of the newly opened magnetic field lines.
• Radioti originally showed that solar wind driven magnetospheric convection accounts for a regular discontinuity feature observed close to magnetic noon in the Jovian main auroral oval, and that electron scattering by whistler mode waves in the Jovian magnetosphere leads to electron precipitation in the ionosphere.
• She proposed that energetic particle injections in the magnetosphere of Saturn, through electron scattering or by electric currents flowing along the boundary of the injected cloud, create transient aurora observed with the Hubble Space Telescope.
• In addition to her current work she also worked on the analysis of particle data in the Galileo project to Jupiter, where she could show very nice and new results on the energetic particle composition of the Jovian magnetosphere.

Despite her young age Radioti is also a remarkable scientific workshop organizer and session convener. She was the main organizer of two auroral Europlanet workshops in 2008 and 2010, sponsored by Europlanet, and convened two auroral sessions in the 2009 and 2011 EPSC meetings. Radioti contributed to 18 papers (nine as the first author), all published in international peer-reviewed journals. Three of her publications (one as first author and two as co-author) were highlighted by AGU. Her work has been recognized with the awarding of the prestigious Prix Baron Nicolet by the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences (2010), for outstanding research on the field of aeronomy. She received twice an FNRS (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique) grant and a Max-Planck-Institute doctoral fellowship. She undoubtedly is a very active and dynamical scientist.