NEO-MAPP Role:
Dr. Patrick Michel is the lead of the team Theories and Observations in Planetology (TOP) at the Laboratory Lagrange. With more than 120 publications in peer-reviewed international journals, he is Director of Research at CNRS and will act as project manager and Coordinator of the NEO-MAPP project. He leads or highly contributes to research projects and space missions devoted to asteroid science and defence. His research includes studies of the collisional process between small bodies, the origin and dynamical evolution of Near-Earth Objects, their physical properties and their response to impacts, tidal effects, spin-up and shaking. He was awarded the NASA Silver Achievement Medal, the international Paolo Farinella Prize 2013 for his contribution to the collisional process, the Carl Sagan Medal of the American Division of Planetary Science for his excellence in public communication and the Prize Young Researcher 2006 of the French Society of Astronomy & Astrophysics. The asteroid 7156 Patrick michelis named after him by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).