Josep M. Trigo Rodríguez

My research interest on Solar System minor bodies started as amateur astronomer and became passionated about astronomy and scientific outreach. I'm now an astrophysicist with deep knowledge and curiosity on Meteoritica and Cosmochemistry, leading a CSIC group of research on asteroids, comets and meteorites at the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC) in Barcelona. I'm specialized in laboratory characterization of meteorites, used as a proxies of the materials forming solar system bodies. In addition, I've also expertise in the study of materials brought by sample-return missions, as I participated in the preliminary examination team of Stardust (NASA) and I led a study on the mechanical properties of Itokawa's regolith returned by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA). My interest on asteroids motivated me to be involved in Marco Polo proposals that evolved in two famous Planetary Defense missions to the binary asteroid Didymos. That's why I'm currently involved in the investigation team of DART (NASA), and HERA (ESA) space missions.

In addition, my fascination for space exploration makes me to be involved in other NASA and ESA initiatives for future exploration of Mars, the Moon, asteroids and comets. The chance to have our laboratory recognized as international repository of the NASA Antarctic Meteorite collection allows me studying the properties of these primordial materials to better understand the implications of these primordial building blocks of planets in astrobiology.

Between my research activities as Principal Investigator of a CSIC group, and I'm also leading the Spanish Fireball and Meteorite Network (SPMN), a multidisciplinary project to explain the meteor phenomenon and recover meteorites at the same time that we gain insight on the hazard associated with large bolides penetrating in the lower atmosphere. So far we have recovered three meteorite falls in Spain (Villalbeto de la Peña, Puerto Lápice, and Traspena), and characterized many other falls like e.g. the historic Ardón and others occurred in South America: Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia.

I'm also involved in academic edition tasks, as well as research grants evaluator and reviewer. For example, I'm currently the Chief Editor of Advances in Astronomy, an open-access Hindawi journal. In addition, I'm associate editor of the following peer-reviewed journals:

- Meteoritics and Planetary Science, a Wiley journal. One of the most prestigious journals, specialized in meteorites and planetary exploration.
- Galaxies, an open astronomy journal, in which he is also part of the Editorial Board: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/galaxies/editors
- Impact studies: Editor of a collection of books dedicated to impact hazard published by Springer
- Review editor of Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Science (Astrobiology).

On the other hand, concerning my peer-review tasks, I'm a Publons-confirmed reviewer of many outstanding journals, like e.g.:

- Advances in Space Research
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Earth, Moon and Planets
- Earth and Planetary Science Letters
- Geology
- Icarus
- Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
- Meteoritics and Planetary Science
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)
- Nature
- Planetary and Space Science
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan (PASJ)
- Science
- The Astronomical Journal
- The Astrophysical Journal

Finally, I'm really passionate about scientific outreach, and author of 12 books and hundreds of articles, and book chapters. I enjoy popularizing science, and being motor of curiosity. I manage my own outreach blogs in Spanish and Catalan, but I plan to publish in English as well.

A compilation of my research group publications:
http://www.spmn.uji.es/ESP/ICE_Meteorite_group.html

Most of my outreach articles in different languages are accessible here:
http://www.spmn.uji.es/ESP/ICE_outreach_articles.html