Gaia People

Joël Poels (1963-2012)

It is with great sadness and shock that we got to know about the sudden death of Joël Poels on 29 December 2012.

Joël achieved in 1986-1989 an IT Bachelor's degree in Numerical computing methods at the Institut Provincial d'Enseignement Supérieur of Seraing (Belgium). In 1989-1992, he got an ICT master degree in medical informatics from the Liège University. During the period 1992-1995, he worked as a software analyst for Siemens Nixdorf in the field of Geographic Information Systems applied to air navigation. He became a software engineering consultant for Telco during the next 3 years.

He then joined in 1998 the Institute of Astrophysics and Geophysics (Liège University). He liked to define himself as an ICT project leader, specialised in software analysis and development related to both space and ground-based observational astrophysics/geophysics missions. During the past years, Joël was involved in software developments within the Gaia DPAC. Joël has acted as an expert software developer, familiar with object-oriented programming languages and with astronomical data. He was involved for half his time in developing Java algorithms to derive the redshifts of quasars based upon the Gaia BP/RP photometry (CU8) and for 50% of his time in the Gaia-DPAC project related to Non-Single Stars in the spectroscopic channel (CU6 / CU4).

Joël's hobbies were all connected with his main fields of interest. He was a classical/jazz/blues/rock guitar player. He was captivated by signal processing applied to musical software and sound engineering. He was also passionate by subjects such as biochemistry, genetics, medical software and aeronautics.

Our deep thoughts go to Joël and to his son Xavier, 7 years old.

Yassine Damerdji, Ludovic Delchambre, Eric Gosset, and Jean Surdej

[Published: 29/01/2013 | updated 29 January 2013]