As professor of Lunar and Planetary Exploration at TUM, my goal is to develop and expand our knowledge and capabilities in space science and exploration. Besides research, my priority is the education of our students, providing them with the best possible opportunities and supervision to acquire and develop their skills and prepare for a future career. 

The overarching motivation of my research emerges from three main aspects:

a) developing a better understanding of volatiles and space resources on planetary bodies (e.g. investigating the lunar water cycle),

b) building the instrumentation to enable their in-situ characterisation (e.g. to measure the subsurface soil properties on planetary bodies), and

c) provide means to extract and utilise resources (e.g. producing oxygen/water/metals from planetary soil).  

My contributions to several committees and working groups include ESA’s PROSPECT science team (since 2019), JAXA's EMS-LUPEX Output Data Creation Team (since 2024), ESA’s ISRU Topical Team (2018–2020), and ESA’s Moon Exploration Strategy Team (2020-2022). Since 2022, I have been one of the principal investigators at the ORIGINS Excellence Cluster at TUM, and since 2024, as ERC Grant Awardee, I have been an Honorary Fellow of the TUM Institute for Advanced Study. I am a member of the Science Organising Committee for the annual European Lunar Symposium and was part of the organising committee for two ESA workshops on ISRU, precursors of the now well-established annual Space Resources Week. I have served as a guest editor for Frontiers in Space Technologies and Planetary and Space Sciences and as reviewer for various other scientific journals, among them Nature Astronomy, Nature Scientific Reports, Icarus, Acta Geotechnica, and others. I was an invited panellist/speaker for the Expert Meeting of the UN Working Group on Legal Aspects of Space Resource Activities and the UN World Space Forum. 

For a first impression of my research, have a look at this interview for TUM.

Some of my recent interviews in public media:

• Tagesschau article “Diamantenschicht auf Merkur vermutet”, published 6 August 2024 (Link)
• Bayerischer Rundfunk podcast “IQ – Wissenschaft schnell erzählt”, Season 1 Episode 72 “Der größte Schatz des Sonnensystems? - Riesige Diamanten auf Merkur entdeckt”, aired 31 July 2024 (Link)
• Bayerischer Rundfunk radio broadcast “Lachlabor - Lustiges Wissen für Kinder zum Miträtseln: Wenn ein Kind im Weltraum geboren wird, ist es dann ein Alien?”, aired 10 December 2023 (Link)
• Student council of TUM Aerospace and Geodesy, aired 29 November 2023 (Link)
• Bayerischer Rundfunk radio broadcast “CheckPod – der Podcast mit Checker Tobi – Mond | Von Mondsteinen und Schwerelosigkeit”, aired 10 March 2023 (Link)