Institute of Research in Astrophysics and Planetology

The Institute of Research in Astrophysics et Planetology (IRAP) is a joint research unit of the Universite Paul Sabatier Toulouse III (UPS) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in which both entities put together staff and resources for the benefit of the laboratory. Since personnel employed by CNRS within this laboratory will participate in the project, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique will act as a third party linked to Université Toulouse III-Paul Sabatier. IRAP’s Solar System group covers two main fields: (1) natural plasmas; the ionised surroundings of the Earth and planets, the Sun and the interplanetary space; (2) planetology; the surfaces and the atmospheres of planets and moons. The group is renowned for its high level of expertise in data analysis software development (AMDA, CLweb, Propagation Tools). Dr. Alexis Rouillard will be the lead of WP4 and the group at IRAP. His work has spanned many areas of the solar-terrestrial sciences, such as the solar atmosphere, the interplanetary medium, galactic cosmic rays, centennial variations of the Sun, energetic particles, and the impact of interplanetary disturbances on the Earth’s environment. He has developed novel techniques to analyse multipoint imagery of the solar wind, the dynamic evolution of coronal shock waves and compare remote-sensing observations with in situ measurements. He leads the French Organisation for Applied Research in Space Weather (OFRAME) and the Solar-Terrestrial Observations and Modelling Service (STORMS). He is also the leader of the ESA Modelling and Data Analysis Working Group (MADAWG). He is a NASA Co-I on PSP / WISPR instrument and the PUNCH mission and is also a NASA Co-I on the Solo-HI and an ESA Co-I on the magnetometer and Solar Wind Analyzer on SolO. Dr Rouillard has been the PI of numerous projects including the ERC grant SLOW SOURCE that aims to find the origin of the slow solar wind, and an ANR grant COROSHOCK to model coronal shock waves and SEPs. Dr. Ilya Plotnikov has experience in modelling the evolution of coronal shocks using remote sensing observations (imagery onboard SOHO, SDO and STEREO) coupled with MHD models of the solar corona, analysis of in-situ SEP measurements, and tracking density structures in the solar wind using Heliospheric Imagers. His research interests also cover kinetic simulations (Particle-In-Cell and MHD codes) of energetic particle acceleration by astrophysical shocks. Dr. Plotnikov has participated in FP7 project HELCATS in A. Rouillard’s team, and has been a WP Leader for the H2020/SERPENTINE project. He is also co-responsible at IRAP for the evolution and maintenance of the Propagation Tool (http://propagationtool.cdpp.eu/) and Space Weather Tool software. Dr. Plotnikov will participate in WPs 4 and 6. Other researchers in the IRAP team will include Dr. Victor Réville, who has almost a decade of experience in solar and stellar wind modelling; and Dr. Simon Thomas, whose current work at IRAP focuses on using the IRAP solar atmosphere model (ISAM) and Solar Orbiter observations to investigate the source of the slow solar wind. Dr. Réville and Dr. Thomas will participate in WP4.