About

I am an astrophysicist working for the European Space Agency, stationed at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD. My functional work is split between two great missions: LISA and JWST.

JWST/NIRSpec Instrument Scientist                             
LISA Study Scientist

For my science I’m interested in Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in dense stellar systems such as Globular Clusters and Nuclear Star Clusters. Most of my work during my PhD was concentrating on the dynamical states of the centers of galactic Globular Clusters to look for signatures massive central black holes. Later on I shifted my work also towards black holes in the centers of nearby galaxies and our own Milky Way. I have been working with observational data (mostly Integral Field Units), N-body Simulations and AMUSE simulations.

CV

EMPLOYMENT

since Apr 2020		LISA Study Scientist
ESA/Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI),
Baltimore, USA
since Aug 2015NIRSpec Instrument and Calibration Scientist
ESA/Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI),
Baltimore, USA

Oct 2013 – Aug 2015		Postdoctoral Research Fellow
ESA/European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwijk, Netherlands

Oct 2010 – Jul 2013		Clusters of Excellence PhD Student
European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany

Sep 2008 – Dec 2008		Student Internship
Institute for Astronomy (IFA), Manoa, USA

Feb 2007 – Apr 2007		Student assistant at the Free Electron Laser (FEL) group Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany
EDUCATION


Oct 2010 – Jul 2013		PhD in Astronomy (Summa Cum Laude)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich
Title: ”Intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters”
Supervisor: Dr. Markus Kissler-Patig

Oct 2005 – Oct 2010		Diplom/Master in Physics (with distinction)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany