France Allard

France Allard, originally from Montréal (Canada), obtained her PhD in astrophysics in 1990 from the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg (Germany) working on theoretical stellar astrophysics. She specialized in the theoretical modeling by numerical simulation of the photospheres and synthetic spectra of low mass stars, aiming at the definition of the temperature scale of the lower main sequence.

Today she is a CNRS researcher (Chargée de Recherche) at the Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon (CRAL) at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENSL). She is a world expert in the theoretical modeling of low mass stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanet, and a founding member of the Phoenix project to develop a multi-purpose model atmosphere transfer code adequate for the study of the spectral properties of a wide variety of astronomical objects from Supernovae to Exoplanets.