Nathalie Marie Carrasco (born in 1977) is a French chemist and professor of astronomy and astrophysics. She is a specialist in atmospheric chemistry at the Atmosphere, Environments and Space Observations Laboratory (LATMOS) at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. In 2016, she was awarded the

Irène Joliot-Curie Prize The Irène Joliot-Curie Prize is a French prize for women in science and technology, founded in 2001. It is awarded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the Airbus Group corporate foundation, the French Academy of Scien ...

in the category Young Woman Scientist.

Biography

Nathalie Carrasco attended the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

- Cachan where she earned her baccalaureate. She first became interested in chemistry and defended her Ph.D. thesis in 2005 at the

University of Paris 7 Paris Diderot University, also known as Paris 7 (french: Université Paris Diderot), was a French university located in Paris, France. It was one of the inheritors of the historic University of Paris, which was split into 13 universities in 197 ...

, in the inter-university Laboratory of Atmospheric Systems (LISA), on terrestrial air quality. The same year, when the European lander Huygens landed on Titan, a satellite of Saturn, its findings revealed the complexity of Titan's atmosphere and the need for chemists to work on it. Carrasco targeted Titan in her work. She earned her post-doctoral habilitation at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in 2012.

Research

As part of a European research project called “ERC,” Carrasco has been studying the upper atmosphere of Titan, in which an intense prebiotic chemistry develops. Carrasco directed the Pampre laboratory experiment, aimed at simulating Titan's atmosphere. Because it is close to that of the Earth before the appearance of life, understanding Titan's atmosphere contributes to understanding the first appearance of life on Earth. This work complements the data collected by the Cassini–Huygens probe. She has also led the physical-chemistry team of Ionized Atmospheres at LATMOS in

Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines () is a new town and an agglomeration community in the French department of Yvelines. It is one of the original five villes nouvelles (new towns) of Paris and was named after the Saint Quentin Pond, which was chosen to ...

, which is also focused on Titan.

Memberships

In 2015, Carrasco was in charge of the gender parity mission at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. She has served as a junior member of the

Institut Universitaire de France The Institut Universitaire de France (IUF, Academic Institute of France), is a service of the French Ministry of Higher Education that distinguishes each year a small number of university professors for their research excellence, as evidenced by t ...

since 2013 and is a member of the National Committee for

National Center for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

(CNRS) in astronomy and astrophysics.

Awards and distinctions

Carrasco received the

for Young Woman Scientist of the Year in 2016 for her research on the atmospheric reactivity conducive to the emergence of life. She was named Chevalier of the National Order of Merit in 2017 for her research on Titan.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carrasco, Nathalie Living people 1977 births 21st-century French women 21st-century French scientists 21st-century French women scientists Paris Diderot University alumni French women chemists Place of birth missing (living people) Knights of the Ordre national du Mérite