Francesco Biagiotti

PS Planetary and Solar System Sciences

The 2024 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Francesco Biagiotti for the poster/PICO entitled:

Evidence of pure ammonia clouds from Juno/JIRAM infrared spectral data (Biagiotti, F.; Grassi, D.; Liuzzi, G.; Piccioni, G.; Villanueva, G.; Oliva, F.; Fletscher, L. N.; Guillot, T.; D'Aversa, E.; Mura, A.; Plainaki, C. and the JIRAM Team)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Francesco Biagiotti is an AASS PhD student at the University of Rome La Sapienza, currently working under the supervision of Davide Grassi, Giuseppe Piccioni, and Alessandro Mura at INAF-IAPS in Rome. The focus of his research is characterizing the Jovian cloud layers and aerosols using the infrared spectral data collected by the Italian image spectrometer JIRAM onboard NASA's Juno mission. His work applies machine-learning-driven techniques and novel radiative transfer suites such as the Planetary Spectrum Generator to retrieve physical properties from spectral data. He is also involved in the analysis of the amazing new Jupiter science data acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Francesco received this award for his presentation on the spectral detection of pure ammonia clouds in a vortex structure in the Northern Jovian atmosphere using the JIRAM data. This is the first detection of pure ammonia clouds during the Juno era and confirms that their presence is rare and only connected to strong convective episodes.