I have held several consultant and expert contracts from ESA ESTEC and ESA HQ for the development of the LOI. This lead to the development (and now production) of two space qualified `chip and wire' hybrid circuits for low noise, high precision digital-to-analogue conversion.
I was a member of the Science Working Team (in both Assessment and Phase-A stages) to provide baseline specifications for the PRISMA proposal to ESA. Probing Rotation and Interior of Stars: Microvariability and Activity (PRISMA) passed from an assessment study to an ESA phase-A study in April 1991. The scientific goal of PRISMA was to study the structure and evolution of stars from the core to corona. To do this stellar activity monitoring and asteroseismology were to be combined. The seismology provides the internal structure, while the activity can provide insight on the structure above the photosphere. This type of experiment must be carried out from space, as the Earth's atmosphere severely hampers the photometric precision, and access to UV and X-ray wavelengths is required for the activity monitoring. Unfortunately, in April 1993 ESA did not select PRISMA to be the M2 medium mission. However, I was then the Principal Investigator of a new proposal (STARS) with largely the same aims, but with more emphasis on the seismic investigation. STARS was selected for an ESA phase-A study in May 1994, I was an extraordinary member of the ESA science working team advising on the scientific and technical aspects of the mission study.
I was a member of the scientific program committee for the 1996 STARS workshop ``STARS, Astrophysics at the turn of the 21st century'' held in Val Cernis, France.
I was Chairman of the Asteroseismology sessions of the 1994 ``GONG'94: Helio-and Astero-Seismology from the Earth and Space'' conference in Los Angeles, and the invited speaker on the STARS mission proposal at the same meeting.
I was a member of the local organizing committee for the 1988 ``Seismology of the Sun and Sun-Like Stars'' meeting in Tenerife, Spain.