Scientific Programme Manager onboarded
On 1st of March 2023 Dr. Mathias Beck has joined ETH Zurich's Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life (COPL) as the Scientific Programme Manager.
Since the early days of his life Mathias felt a deep fascination for nature and the underlying sciences. As a consequence, Mathias studied Physics at the Heidelberg University. During his studies, Mathias got strongly attracted by the infinitely minuscule cosmos of particle physics and the beauty of the underlying theory. The activities during his Diploma and PhD theses with the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics led Mathias to work at some of the world’s finest institutions in the domain like CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, and DESY in Hamburg, Germany.
Starting in 1997, Mathias worked for 2 years at Leica Microsystems, a leading company in the semiconductor industry. Following this experience in a commercial environment, Mathias sought to reintegrate a scientific environment.
In 1999, Mathias integrated the ‘INTEGRAL Science Data Centre’ hosted by the Department of Astronomy of the University of Geneva. This was his first professional contact with the infinitely grand cosmos that astronomy seeks to describe and understand. Ever since, the passion to contribute to the understanding of our Universe via astronomical observations and research grew continuously. Mathias is grateful that, over more than 20 years, he was entrusted with ever growing responsibilities for contributions to space missions of the European Space Agency (ESA), like INTEGRAL, Gaia and CHEOPS, in which the Geneva Observatory has a strong scientific interest. Mathias' personal contributions were focusing on the management aspects of the development and operations of science ground segments of space missions and to enable and support the exploitation of space born scientific data. Mathias has been responsible for the technical and financial planning, the monitoring and the reporting to his upper management as well as to the related funding agencies.
His involvement in a variety of domains ranging from high-energy extragalactic topics via stellar aspects of the Milky Way to the very exciting area of exoplanets, paired with his desire to understand the scientific foundations, has permitted Mathias to acquire a broad astronomical insight.
We wish Mathias a very warm welcome and are looking forward to his contributions to the activities of the COPL.