Claude Huc

CNES, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales

Claude Huc is the manager of the CNES Gaia team. Claude's first activity for Gaia, since the involvement of CNES at the end of 2004, was to prepare a proposal outlining CNES's involvement in Gaia data processing in conjunction with the scientific community, the European partners and CNES Programmes Directorate. This involvement is now clearly defined. Claude's main tasks are now focused on the technical coordination and the coherence of the CNES activities in relation to the Gaia Coordination Units CU1, CU2, CU4, CU6 and CU8; the preliminary studies and assessments needed for CNES as a Gaia Data Processing Centre; and the CNES team internal organization with an appropriate level of resources and skills.

Claude is a physicist and engineer by training. He joined CNES (the French Space Agency) in 1973 to take charge of the design and development of systems for processing and archiving data from European scientific space missions. During the eighties, he was technical manager for the Hipparcos data processing system which was developed in the framework of the FAST consortium and then integrated, validated and operated at the CNES computing centre. This cooperation between CNES and European laboratories within the FAST consortium was most productive.

Since the early nineties, Claude's activity has been focussed on the management, preservation, recovery and exploitation of scientific data. In this context, various Research & Technology studies have been conducted on the generic nature of systems; he contributed to the creation of specialised CNES services in this field. He also participates in standardisation activities in the field of data archiving. He has been in charge of a department created by CNES to exploit, preserve and add value to space data and has contributed to the studies for the creation of the CDPP (Plasma Physics data centre).

He left Gaia in early 2007.

[Published: 17/04/2006 | Updated: 14/08/2008]