Angioletta Coradini
The 2012 Jean Dominique Cassini Medal & Honorary Membership is awarded to Angioletta Coradini in recognition of her important and wide range of work in Planetary Sciences and solar system formation, and her leading role in the development of space infrared instrumentation for planetary exploration.
Angioletta Coradini has performed outstanding work in many fields of planetary sciences using both observational and theoretical approaches: analysis of lunar samples, study of the geology of inner planets surfaces, remote sensing studies of terrestrial volcanic areas in the infrared, investigation of the thermal evolution of planets and satellites, study of the thermal differentiation of comet nuclei, Centaurs and Kuiper Belt objects, models of the primitive solar nebula and planetary subnubulae for study of planet formation. Since the beginning of her career, Coradini has been active as a co-investigator or principal investigator (PI) in many space borne experiments. She is now one of the major players in Europe developing innovative infrared space instrumentation for planetary exploration. Coradini was team member of the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) and the Omega Imaging Spectrometer (Omega-VNIR) for the Mars 96 Russian mission. She was PI of the TIMS-AIS airborne survey of Italian Volcanoes. She is presently PI of the Visible Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer for the Rosetta Mission (VIRTIS) and of the Visual and Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VIR) for the Dawn mission that will fly by the asteroids Ceres and Vesta. She is PI of JRAM on Juno (NASA) and Ma-Miss on ExoMars(ESA). She is also a co-investigator of the Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) with responsibility for the Italian subsystem, and a co-I of VIRTIS aboard Venus Express. Coradini has played a leading role in the definition of the Italian contribution to the exobiology Pasteur payload of the planned ExoMars ESA mission. Coradini has published more than 200 scientific publications and three books. She has also been active in a number of scientific organisations and committees. Coradini is presently director of the Istituto di Fisica dello spazio Interplanetario dell Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF).
Angioletta Coradini died in late 2011, after this citation was written; the Jean Dominique Cassini Medal was awarded posthumously at the 2012 General Assembly.
Medal lecture video (Youtube) of the Jean Dominique Cassini Medal given at the EGU General Assembly 2012.