Announcement of Ariane Courtot's appointment as a postdoctoral fellow in our group.
In January 2026, Ariane Courtot from France became a member of our team. Ariane was successful with her project proposal in the selection procedure announced by the Director of the Astronomical Institute for the position of postdoctoral fellow.
Ariane Courtot studied astronomy at the Observatoire de Paris, where she defended her dissertation on the topic “Meteor shower revisited: characterising chaos in meteoroid streams”. As part of her work, she studies the dynamics of meteor showers. She has analysed several meteor showers (Geminids, Draconids, Lenoids) using dynamic chaos. During her two-year stay at ESA, she worked on the risk assessment for space probes. She modelled in detail the circumsolar dust ring near the orbit of Venus and the impact risk for the BepiColombo probe. As part of her work in the meteor physics group, she is testing methods for identifying meteor showers.