In the spotlight: Andrea Zacchei

January 2018

Andrea Zacchei is the Euclid Science Ground Segment Manager

Why did you join the Euclid team ?

I worked as LFI Data Processing Manager on Planck (ESA Mission) for 15 years and this gave me the possibility to acquire a lot of experience in space based programs. 
As soon as Fabio Pasian, former ECSGSM, for personal reasons, decided to resign I was appointed to cover his role. At that time (more than three years ago) I was not so happy as the workload on Planck was not yet finished and the one on Euclid was growing fast. BUT now I'm very excited to see how this project is evolving.

What do you see as the biggest challenge in Euclid ?

Due to the enormous amount of data that Euclid will use, the analysis will not be centralized. This means that we have to develop an infrastructure (Infrastructure Abstraction Layer, Data Transfer System, Archive System, Processing Coordinator, etc ...) able to allow the pipeline to be run on different Science Data Centers that will use a different hardware. Let me say that from the technical point of view this is very challenging and is going in the direction of a cloud system.
 

What are your expectations with Euclid ?

Planck provided us the most detailed image of the Universe immediately after the inflationary period. With Euclid I'm expecting to learn how the Universe evolved and the role of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. 
In few words try to understand better our Universe and this is simply the MAIN question.

If you had to define your work within Euclid with one word, what would it be ?

ONE WORD--> Networking
Talking to people, sending e-mails, attending telecons with some intelligent things to say... 
Managing the entire ECSGS where 15 countries are represented with more than 50 institutes participating is very complex, and the work required by the Project Office to organize it is huge. 
I think in any case that the project is going very well and this is because all people involved are excited by the scientific scope, so they dedicate to the project more than 100%.