Fabien Chéreau

Fabien Chéreau (born September 17, 1980 in Villefranche sur Saône, France) is a French Research Engineer and computer programmer best known for authoring the planetarium software Stellarium, a free, open source astronomy software package which renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time. [ [http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=GAIA&page=Gaia_people&person=36&ordering=alphabetical GAIA People] from Research & Scientific Support Department - European Space Agency]

He previously worked as a Research Engineer at the Paris Astronomical Observatory for the satellite GAIA of European Space Agency on a CNES-funded position for the On-board Detection and the Radial Velocity Spectrometer working groups. He is working in ESO on a plugin for stellarium, called VirGO, as of April 2008.

Fabien wrote the first version of the Gaia on-board detection algorithm. He worked on the definition of the Spectro sky mappers and was in charge of the development of the algorithms for these instruments.

Education

After graduating from Lycée du Val de Saône, Trévoux in Science with majors in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Industrial Technology, he enrolled in INSA, the French engineering university at Lyon in France. Later he studied his final year as an exchange student in the Tampere University of Technology, Finland. Fabien Chéreau achieved his Master's Degree (Diplôme d'Ingénieur) in Computer Science at the National Institute of Applied Sciences of Lyon, France.

Personal Projects

Since summer 2000, Fabien Chéreau is working on the free, open source astronomy software Stellarium in C++/OpenGL during his spare time. He also programmed "The Biotes" an Experimental artificial life program (in C++) which experiments neural networks and evolution algorithms.

Interests

Fabien Chéreau's interest in observations, calculations and Astronomy helped in the creation of Stellarium.

References

External links

* [http://stellarium.free.fr Stellarium] Official website for Stellarium.
* [http://www.eso.org ESO] European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere.
* [http://archive.eso.org/cms/virgo VirGO] VirGO, a plugin for Stellarium.