After years of focus on making the space science projects of other scientists succeed, I am just beginning to explore what areas in astrophysics hold my interest now and where I believe I can contribute today. For my Ph.D. thesis, I studied soft X-ray sources in the ROSAT all-sky survey with an extensive ground-based follow up campaign at the Palomar and Keck observatories as well as the Very Large Array. These observations led to the detection of pulsed X-ray emission from a milli-second pulsar, studies of Active Galactic Nuclei and the monitoring of the X-ray counterpart of a soft gamma-ray repeater. As all of this might already suggest, I started my research career in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and had the opportunity to spend three years as a visiting graduate student at Caltech. Based on this work, I earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the Technical University in Munich.
My passion for communicating science and my desire to stay in California led me to build a career in Education and Public Outreach for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and in Business Development for space science missions at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. Later, I returned to JPL as a capture lead and to manage their proposal office. I was fortunate to contribute to the success of the James Webb Space Telescope, the mission to the asteroid 16 Psyche, and many others. I continue to support LGBTIQA colleagues through my committee work within the American Astronomical Society.
Today, I am curious about how Artificial Intelligence is shaping what is possible and how it changes how we approach astrophysics. Beyond this, I want to explore new ways for scientist to engage effectively with an increasingly skeptical and information-overloaded public. I am also happy to collaborate with any researcher or science team who look to sharpen their message to make their proposal more competitive.