Post-doc ORIGINS fellow, September 2008-December 2010, National Natural History Museum, Paris (FR) After the completion of my PhD, I was fortunate to be hired as a post-doc from an ORIGINS fellowship at the National Natural History Museum in Paris (France). I began my PhD at Arizona State University (US), under the tutelage of Jeff Hester. With Dr. Hester, I studied the process of low-mass star formation associated with massive stars, in regions like Orion or the Eagle nebula Dr. Hester’s research focused mostly on triggered star formation, a process where the radiation pressure from massive stars creates a shock in a nearby molecular cloud, causing the collapse of dense core within it. Although interesting regions, these star clusters were not though to be the types of environment where our own Solar System was formed. This view soon changed with the discovery of remnants of the short-lived radionuclide 60Fe in meteorites. Due to its “short” half-life (2.6 Myr), it must have been incorporated in the solar system soon before or during its formation. The most likely candidate for this element is a core-collapse supernova, the dying stage of a massive star. Hence a link between massive stars and our own Solar sSystem had been found. At this point, my research focus shifted. With a new advisor, Steve Desch, and working closely with Dr. Hester, we used our knowledge of star forming regions and we came up with a scenario detailing how ejecta from a supernova would be injected in a nearby protoplanetary disk. This would explain the early Solar System’s 60Fe abundance. My PhD thesis described the work I did testing this scenario with various computer simulations I had done with codes I had written for this purpose. Of course, other groups and researchers were also working on other theories explaining the origin of 60Fe. Starting form a different point in the star formation process, Matthieu Gounelle (of the Laboratoire de Minéralogie et Cosmochimie du Muséum of the National Natural History Museum of Paris (France)), came up with a different theory where supernova ejecta would be mixed in interstellar gas that would rapidly form an 60Fe-rich molecular cloud from which our solar system would form. His idea was to inject 60Fe in large-scale structures, instead of at the small scale as we had previously proposed. I was hired as a post-doc to test this scenario using hydrodynamical simulations in work similar to what I had done in my PhD thesis. During the period of my ORIGINS fellowship, I worked with Dr. Gounelle and Patrick Henebelle from the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS). With the help of Dr. Henebelle, I modified a 3D hydrodynamics code, RAMSES, to simulate large-scale injection of 60Fe from supernovae. The code had to be modified extensively, from adding cooling to appropriately simulate supernova exlosions, to programming tracer particles to follow the ejecta, and by extension, the 60Fe. After the modifications were complete, Simulations were launched, simulating various astrophysical scenarios (ex: Fig. 1) Fig. 1. A massive star explodes outside a molecular cloud. As the ejecta expand, some of it gets mixed into the cloud, injecting 60Fe in the process. The ORIGINS fellowship gave me access to knowledge that greatly enhanced the quality of my work. When running any king of computer simulations one must be mindful of the starting and finishing point of those simulations. The ORIGINS network allowed me to meet renowned scientist, both in the fields of astrophysics and cosmochemistry. Discussions with astrophysicists gave my simulations more realistic initial parameters, while dialogs with cosmochemists allowed me to verify that the results of my simulations were consistent with what we know about the Solar System. One cannot do everything alone. The exchange of knowledge, that leads to adding relevant physics to a piece of work, and then being able to compare the results with what is know, is how I enjoy contributing to the scientific community, and was made possible during this post-doc with the ORIGINS network.