• Director for Partnerships
• Head of Solar Systems Physics in Aberystwyth
• Visiting Research Professor: Plantetary and Space Sciences Research Institue, Open University
• Director for Communication, Innovation and Recruitment at IMAPS

Manuel has recently come to the end of his second term as European Geophysical Union President for Planetary Science. He is a Europlanet coordinator, and was central to setting up the European Planetary Science. Previously he was an Individual Merit CCLRC Fellow (Band2), and Head of the Planets and Magnetospheres Group at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, and an Honorary Professor at Warwick University, UK. He has served on a number of ESA and NASA and UK committees, and has been a frequent media contributor.

Manuel obtained a B.Sc. in Physics in 1977 from Warwick University, an M.Sc. in experimental space physics from Leicester University in 1978, and a Ph.D (on cosmic ray detection) from Bristol University in 1983. He worked at Bristol for two years (80-82) as a PDRA in the cosmic ray group at Bristol, and a further year as a PDRA working on the electron microscopy and analysis of semiconductors. He joined the RAL Astrophysics division in 1983 as a Senior Research Associate working on Ultraviolet Astronomy and the behaviour of surfaces in space. In 1986 he became a staff scientist (Senior Scientific Officer) at RAL, joining the High Power Laser Division as Target Area Manager, specialising in plasma diagnostics, X-ray lasers, and inertial confinement fusion, before rejoining the RAL astrophysics division in 1989. He has been a member of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Executive Committee of the French national Centre for Plasma Physics Data (CDPP).