Jordi Portell
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Office number: TD4A04 (Parc Científic de Barcelona, D Tower, 4th floor) Telephone number: +34 93 403 98 43 Task: Gaia Project Office (Interface Engineer), Virgo-ICCUB Team Leader |
Dr. Jordi Portell studied Electronics Engineering in the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, where he designed the downlink system of a Spanish minisatellite. He has been involved in Gaia since mid 2000, when he started his PhD on the on-board data handling, telemetry and data compression systems. His focus has always been on the payload data handling and compression.
In 2007 he was the Scientific Manager of the Gaia Optimum Compression Algorithm TRP study (GOCA), which provided the baseline of the data compression system that is being used onboard Gaia. Before that, in 2005 he moved from the space segment to the ground segment, performing and reporting the last tests with the Gaia Data Access and Analysis Study (GDAAS). Afterwards, around 2006 he started to work on the Initial Data Treatment system (IDT), where he had the role of Technical Manager from 2011 to 2017.
He has also worked for the Intermediate Data Updating (IDU), and he has also been manager of the Data Processing Centre of Barcelona (DPCB). Jordi has advised two PhD theses related to Gaia (one on data compression and another on high-performance Java data processing), as well as 13 master theses (most of them related to data compression). He is one of the inventors of the FAPEC patent (Fully Adaptive Prediction Error Coder), a high-performance lossless data compressor for space and ground applications. Since 2013 he is Chief Technology Officer at DAPCOM Data Services S.L., the spin-off company that commercializes the compressor. Since 2017, he is the Interface Engineer of the Gaia mission Project Office, as well as the technology co-director of ICCUB. Since mid’2018 he’s the Virgo-ICCUB team leader.
When he finds some time, he is also the representative of the SETI project in Catalonia. Beyond that, he likes composing and DJ-mixing music, photography, astronomy, biking and sightseeing.
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