The Baron Marcel Nicolet Medal 2021

Doctor Kusnetsova

Dr Kusnetsova is probably one of the best-known space weather scientists in the world, through her unique activity in founding, maintaining and constantly developing the famous Community Coordinated Modelling Center at GSFC for over 20 years now. Throughout her long career she has gained experience in several scientific regimes of the Sun Earth system, starting out with magnetospheric reconnection, a key mechanism in the energisation of magnetospheric plasma, to the propagation and modification of solar eruptions through the heliosphere. She uses the “sun-to-mud” chain of models at CCMC as her main instrument to bring together all kinds and flavours of scientists in the entire coupled system in a spirit of altruistic collaboration.

She has been the primus motor in a series of scientific efforts to combine the community into one body, in order to optimise scientific progress and to meet the growing requirements from the SWx end-user community. Examples are the generous open access to the NASA CCMC facility with user friendly runs-on demand, numerous open workshops, model junctures and test-beds, international Fora for SWx capabilities assessments, benchmarking exercises, model comparisons and comparative ensemble runs, and most recently the unique COSPAR-sponsored International Space Weather Action Team (ISWAT) initiative. ISWAT aims at bringing all parts of the space weather community together in a bottom-up approach to update the famous original COSPAR “Space Weather Roadmap” document by Schrijver et al. (2015), which was a major breakthrough of space weather activities.

She represents a rare breed of scientists, who put the greater value of science progress in front of their own personal career, satisfied with serving and promoting community efforts. She also has a wide experience in general outreach activities and is a frequently invited speaker and advisor in numerous SWx related meetings and organisations.