Advances in Space Research

Top Reviewers for 2022

[Pascal Willis, Advances in Space Research Editor-in-Chief]

Advances in Space Research (ASR), as with any established scientific journal, insists on a rigorous peer-review process to maintain the integrity and quality of its published papers. An essential part of this process is the reviewer, spending his or her valuable time using unique expertise to evaluate the scientific quality of a manuscript and help the Editor make a fair and timely decision.

To further highlight the vital importance of reviewers to the quality ASR publications, the Editors have selected their 10 top reviewers for the year 2022, taking into account criteria such as the number and the quality of the referee reports performed during this year. By publishing the names and short biographies of these selected reviewers in this issue of Space Research Today, we would like to acknowledge their valuable efforts. Their names will also be acknowledged on the journal homepage of ASR (https://www. journals.elsevier.com/advances-in-space-research/reviewers/thank-you-reviewers-aisr).

We also feel deeply obliged to all ASR reviewers who have contributed this past year who are not mentioned here, and we sincerely thank all of them for bringing the journal up to its current scientific standard.

Pascal Willis, ASR Editor-in-Chief

Adriaan Klinkenberg, ASR Publisher (Elsevier)

Elisa Maria Alessi works as a researcher at the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Information Technologies of the National Research Council in Italy. She graduated in physics from the University of Padova in Italy and obtained the PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Barcelona in Spain, funded by a Marie Curie fellowship.

Her research focuses on the application of dynamical systems theory on orbital mechanics problems, with special emphasis on the role of natural perturbations on the design of disposal strategies for satellites orbiting the Earth, and on the exploitation of the third-body effect for the design of interplanetary trajectories.

Aigen Li is Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri.

He studied astrophysics in Beijing Normal University, Beijing Astronomical Observatory, and Leiden University of the Netherlands, where he received BS, MS and PhD degrees, respectively in 1992, 1994 and 1998. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Missouri, USA as an assistant professor in 2004 and promotion to associate/full professor in 2008/2011, he was first a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University (1999-2002), and then a Theoretical Astrophysics Prize Fellow at the University of Arizona (2002-2004), USA. He is an expert on cosmic dust, with interests spanning comets, interstellar medium, planet-forming disks, evolved stars, galaxies and active galactic nuclei.

Zishen Li has worked full time in the Aerospace Information Research institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIR/CAS) as an assistant professor/associate professor and then full professor from 2020.

He was responsible for forming the BDS/GNSS precise positioning and Atmosphere remote sensing research group in 2013 and in 2021 establishing the department of Integrated application of Navigation and Remote Sensing of which he is the director. His research interests include the BDS/GNSS precise and trusted positioning, navigation for autonomous driving, and the monitoring of ionospheric space weather etc.

He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers with about 2800 citations and lodged 12 national patents, and is the recipient of numerous pres tigious research awards from organizations both internal and external, such as the Chinese National Science and Technology Progress Award, Beijing Natural Science Award of China, and Australia Endeavor Research Fellowship.

In addition, Zishen Li is also the chair of real-time ionosphere monitoring and modeling of IAG 4.3, and the member of ionosphere workgroup of Interna tional GNSS services.

Kavutarapu Venkatesh is a faculty in the Space and Atmospheric Sciences division of the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India.

He did his MSc in 2008, and PhD in 2013 from the Andhra University, India. Later he worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Universidade do Vale do Praiba (UNIVAP), Brazil during 2013 to 2018 and at the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL), India during 2018-2021. His major research interests include Low latitude ionosphere-thermosphere dynamics, topside ionospheric modelling and space weather effects. He has 48 research publications in peer reviewed international journals to his credit. He served as a guest editor for three special issues in Advances in Space Research. He is the Co-convener of the WG-II of the International Association of Geo-magnetism & Aeronomy (IAGA). He is a recipient of the URSI Young Scientist Award (2015), INSPIRE fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India (2011-2013) and two gold medals from the Andhra University, India (2008).

Patricia Melin is a Professor of Computer Science in the Graduate Division, Tijuana Institute of Technology, Tijuana, Mexico, since 1998.

In addition, she is serving as Director of Graduate Studies in Computer Science and is head of the research group on Hybrid Neural Intelligent Systems (2000-present). She holds a DSc in computer science from the Polish Academy of Sciences. She has also been advisor of more than 100 graduate students in computer science at the PhD and masters levels. She has published nearly 1000 publications in indexed journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings, as well as nearly chapters, and conference proceedings, as well as nearly 50 books, and as consequence of this she has achieved more than 20800 citations with an h index of 80 in Google Scholar, and h index of 69 in Scopus. In addition, she has been awarded the Highly Cited Researcher recognition in the area of computer science in 2017 and 2018 by Clarivate Analytics-Web of Science because she is in the top 1% cited author in this area.

She has also been awarded with the IFSA 2021 Award on Outstanding Applications of Fuzzy Technology for the contribution of Development and Application of Fuzzy Models in Medical Diagnosis and the NAFIPS 2022 K. S. Fu Award for contributions to the Pattern Recognition, Fuzzy Control, Neuro-Fuzzy and Genetic-Fuzzy hybrid approaches.

Yuichi Otsuka received his PhD degree in engineering from Kyoto University, Japan in 1999.

He is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University in Japan. He is a member of the Society of Geomagnetism and Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences (SGEPSS) in Japan, and the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

His research interests include ionospheric dynamics using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), radar, and airglow observation techniques. His research is aimed at better understanding the Earth’s upper atmosphere with an emphasis on the ionosphere at equatorial region and mid latitudes.

Especially, he is interested in atmospheric waves propagating from below to the ionosphere and thermosphere. By analyzing the GNSS data, recently, he studies ionospheric disturbances and irregularities, such as traveling ionospheric disturbance and equatorial plasma bubbles.

Michael Pezzopane has been working since 2001 as a geophysicist at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Upper Atmosphere Physics and Radiopropagation Unit, Rome, Italy.

He got his Master Science in physics at “Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy, and his PhD in geophysics at the “Alma Mater Studiorum” University of Bologna, Italy.

His main research interests focus on: ionospheric physics, radio wave propagation in the ionosphere, atmospheric gravity waves, autoscaling of vertical ionospheric soundings, electron density irregularities at low and high latitudes, E sporadic layer, topside modelling and three dimensional electron density modelling of the ionosphere.

He is author and coauthor of more than 120 papers published in journals indexed in ISI-WEB of Science, of which for most of them he is the first or second author. He is coauthor of the algorithm Autoscala, able to automatically scale ionospheric characteristics from an ionogram.

He has recently developed a nowcasting version of the IRI model for the European region and conceived an improvement of the topside representation made by the NeQuick model.

In 2013 he received the first prize for the best communication in Geophysics presented at the XCIX National Congress of the Italian Physical Society, held in Trieste. He is coauthor of the patent number 1325371 titled “Digital Ionosonde”.

He was and he is involved in several national and international projects, sometimes with leading roles. He taught ionospheric physics at the department of physics of “Sapienza” University of Rome for several academic years. He is coordinator of the division “Aeronomic Phenomena” of IAGA-Italia, co-chair of IAGA WGII-E: “Ionospheric irregularities, Fields and Waves”, and member of the International Reference Ionosphere Working Group.

He keeps international collaborations with foreign universities as for instance the UNIVAP of São José dos Campos, Brazil, the Frederick University of Nicosia, Cyprus, and the National University of Tucuman, Argentina.

Alessandro A. Quarta received his Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2005 and, currently, he is Professor of flight mechanics at the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering of the University of Pisa.

His main research areas include spaceflight simulation, spacecraft mission analysis and design, low-thrust trajectory optimization, solar sail and E-sail dynamics and control.

Konstantin G. Ratovsky received his PhD in radio physics from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of Siberia Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (ISTP SB RAS) in 1999.

He works at the ISTP SB RAS as a head of laboratory. His scientific interests include ionosonde and incoherent scatter radar and data analysis, local empirical models of the ionosphere, ionospheric effects of geomagnetic storms and stra tospheric warming event, and studies of travelling ionospheric disturbances. Dr. Ratovsky is a member of the Working Group on the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI).

Zheng Hong (George) Zhu is a Professor and Tier 1 York Research Chair in Space Technology (20172022) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at York University in Toronto, Canada.

He was the inaugural Academic Director of Research Commons (2019-2022) in the Office of Vice-President of Research and Innovation. He is also an Honorary Treasurer of the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering. Before he joined York University in 2006, he was a research associate at the University of Toronto (1993-1995) and then a senior stress/structural engineer at Curtiss-Wright Indal Technologies (1995-2006).

His research includes the dynamics and control of tethered spacecraft, autonomous space robotics, visual servo, CubeSat technology, and additive manufacturing in space. He has published over 350 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He is an elected Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics, College Member of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Canada, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, Fellow of the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering, Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Associate fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Dr. Zhu is the recipient of 2021 York University President’s Research Excellence Award, 2021 Robert W. Angus Medal from Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, and the 2019 Engineering Medal – R&D from Professional Engineers Ontario.