Angioletta Coradini
The 2007 David Bates Medal is awarded to Angioletta Coradini in recognition of her important and wide ranging work in planetary sciences and Solar System formation, and her leading role in the development of space infrared instrumentation for planetary exploration.
Angioletta Coradini performed outstanding works in many fields of planetary sciences using both observational and theoretical approaches: analysis of lunar samples, study of the geology of the surfaces of the inner planets, 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, Angioletta Coradini has been active as a co-investigator or principal investigator (PI) in a large number of space borne experiments. She is now one of the major actors in Europe developing innovative infrared space instrumentation for Planetary Exploration. Angioletta Coradini was team member of the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) and Omega Imaging Spectrometer (Omega-VNIR) on the Soviet Mars 96 mission. She was PI of the TIMS-AIS airborne survey of Italian Volcanoes and 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) of the Dawn mission that will flyby the asteroids Ceres and Vesta. She is also co-investigator of the Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) with large responsibilities in the Italian subsystem, and Co-I of VIRTIS aboard Venus Express. Angioletta Coradini has played a leading role in the definition of the Italian contribution to the exobiology Pasteur payload of the planned ESA ExoMars mission.
Angioletta Coradini has published more than 200 scientific publications and three books. She has also been active in a number of scientific organisations and committees. Angioletta Coradini is presently director of the Istituto di Fisica dello spazio Interplanetario del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Roma.