Untitled - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire de Grenoble

• LAOG researchers (and publishing engineers) have published about 400 refereed papers, and about as
many contributions to conferences. This means an average of 80 refereed papers and 80 conference papers per
year, or about 2 + 2 papers per year per researcher/publishing engineer. This result is all the more remarkable
since many researchers have teaching duties (up to 50% of their time), as is the case for several engineers, and/or
important responsibilities in national and international science or advisory committees. (These responsibilities
are listed in Appendix in chapter19.)
• There is a significant, and increasing, number of invited papers in international conferences, on the order
of 10 per year on average. A notable exception will be in 2005: at the Protostars and Planets V conference
(held every 5-7 yrs since its creation), which is expected to gather 700 participants in Hawaii in late October,
a pre-selection of papers has resulted in 9 invited talks for LAOG, the highest number of the whole community
in the field of Star and Planet formation (the next laboratory is NASA Ames, Calif., with 8 papers). More
generally, LAOG considers that part of its scientific policy should be to communicate and exchange results with
the international community in conferences, and devotes a significant part of its budget to support this activity.
• The bibliography also lists several patents, relevant to micro- and nanotechnologies, testifying of the will
of LAOG to transfer knowledge to the industry while protecting the intellectual property of its engineers.
1.3 Relations with the outside world
1.3.1 Relations with and within the Observatory of Grenoble (OSUG)
Following a ministerial reform in 1999, the original Grenoble Observatory was expanded, including the “Laboratoire
d’Astrophysique de Grenoble” (LAOG) and three Earth sciences laboratories (glaciology, hydrology, and
geophysics), as well as a newly created planetology laboratory (the “Laboratoire de Planétologie de Grenoble”,
LPG). The new structure, gathering nearly 500 people, became the “Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de
Grenoble” (OSUG). This reform created a new administrative layer to which the new LAOG had to adapt, but
also brought new resources and new contacts with other fields. Within OSUG, while each laboratory has its own
goals and priorities, new scientific collaborations between LAOG and other OSUG laboratories are emerging,
in glaciology for projects in Antarctica (see GRIL part), and with LPG (dust grain evolution in the young solar
system and young stellar disks, meteorite irradiation, exoplanetary atmospheres, etc.). It is planned to develop
these collaborations in the coming years. It is also worth mentioning that discussions take place from time to
time with the geophysicists on topics such as turbulence and dynamo. The state of the art, or the physical
parameter space (e.g., Reynolds numbers for turbulence), was just too different in the relevant areas for these
collaborations to take place immediately, but the situation is improving.
1.3.2 Relations with IRAM
The roots of LAOG can be found in the GAG (Groupe d’Astrophysique de Grenoble), a group created by
Alain Omont as a scientific support for the newly created Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, IRAM
(1979). Thus most of the founding fathers of LAOG had strong ties with IRAM (the others were the embryo
of the Sherpas group around G. Pelletier), and were in particular heavily involved in mm astronomy. The
new emphasis on high-angular resolution in astronomy in 1991, with a fast hiring of young researchers and
engineers developing science and optical-IR instruments around this topic, resulted in a decline of the mm
involvement of the newly created LAOG. IRAM, which is by construction a service institute, pursued on its
side the instrumental developments for the Pico Veleta 30m single-dish radiotelescope and the Plateau de Bure
Interferometer thereafter. LAOG researchers involved in mm astronomy either joined IRAM to participate in
its development, or continued to use IRAM facilities by way of observing proposals (sometimes including IRAM
co-Is), but the scientific collaborations between the two institutes remained limited, in spite of a few attempts
on both sides (PhD theses, schools...). It is however fair to add that there were on many occasions informal
exchanges between the instrumental teams of LAOG and IRAM. Again, IRAM is a service institute, subject
to the constraints of its funding agencies in Germany and Spain in addition to CNRS in France, and it is not
departure (case of new researchers, post-docs, etc.), references to CDS (Strasbourg) databases (case of tables published only in
electronic form), etc. The difference between the two is about 10% of the total number of publications.
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