Main Research Fields

It is ironic how water, so essential to life, tends to obscure our search for it far beyond our reach. Contamination of detectors (among other components) on spacecraft is a hindrance to (especially) science missions (e.g. Gaia, Euclid), and tends to reduce or distort optical signals. Current contamination models are unable to accurately predict the accumulation rate of molecular contaminants on important surfaces, such that de-contamination sequences must be repeteated - at the cost valuable mission time and energy. The goal of my research fellowship is to improve our understanding of the behaviour of water in and around spacecraft through modeling and experimentation.