Fabien Chéreau (born 17 September 1980 in Villefranche-sur-Saône,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

) is a French research engineer and

computer programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

best known for authoring the

planetarium A planetarium (: planetariums or planetaria) is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation. A dominant feature of most planetariums is ...

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

Stellarium, a free,

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

astronomy software package which renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time.GAIA People
from Research & Scientific Support Department - European Space Agency He previously worked as a Research Engineer at the

Paris Observatory The Paris Observatory (, ), a research institution of the Paris Sciences et Lettres University, is the foremost astronomical observatory of France, and one of the largest astronomical centres in the world. Its historic building is on the Left Ban ...

for the satellite

Gaia In Greek mythology, Gaia (; , a poetic form of ('), meaning 'land' or 'earth'),, , . also spelled Gaea (), is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (S ...

European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

on a CNES-funded position for the On-board Detection and the Radial Velocity Spectrometer working groups. He worked in ESO on a plugin for Stellarium, called VirGO, from April 2008 to 2010. Chéreau 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 Tampere University of Technology (TUT) () was Finland's second-largest university in engineering sciences. The university was located in Hervanta, a suburb of Tampere, Finland, Tampere. It was merged with the University of Tampere to create the ...

, Finland. 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, 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 Artificial life (ALife or A-Life) is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline ...

program (in C++) which experiments with neural networks and evolution algorithms.

Interests

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

References

External links

Stellarium
Official website for Stellarium.
ESO
European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere.
VirGO
VirGO, a plugin for Stellarium. {{DEFAULTSORT:Chereau, Fabien 1980 births Living people People from Villefranche-sur-Saône French computer programmers