Scienceרוית חלד

Ravit Helled

Ravit Helled is an Israeli planetary scientist and a professor at the University of Zurich who studies gas giant planets and exoplanets.

born 1980Calculating Saturn's rotation periodResearch on gas giant planetsNASA Juno science team

Occupation: astronomer, astrophysicist
Education: Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of California, Los Angeles

Ravit Helled was born in 1980

Ravit Helled was born in 1980. She earned a bachelor's degree in science at Tel Aviv University in 2004. She went on to a doctorate there on the formation of giant planets.

From 2007 to 2009 she was a postdoctoral fellow in planetary science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and in 2009 she became a research fellow there. She studied how planetesimals affect the formation of gas giants and modeled the outer planets of the Solar System.

In 2011 she became a senior lecturer in Earth sciences at Tel Aviv University, and in 2015 an associate professor. In 2016 she moved to the University of Zurich. She heads the university's space network.

Her research covers the formation, structure and rotation of planets. In 2015 she and colleagues calculated the rotation period of Saturn from its gravity field and shape. She is on the science team of NASA's Juno probe to Jupiter and is a lead scientist of the European Space Agency's JUICE mission.