Markus Kissler-Patig

Since July 2017, I am working again at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, serving as Deputy Director for Science. Between 2012 and 2017, I served as the Director of the Gemini Observatory. Gemini is an international parternship between Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the United States, with headquarters in Hilo, Hawaii and La Serena, Chile. The observatory is operating two 8m-class telescopes - one on top of Maunakea in Hawaii, the other on Cerro Pachon in Chile. I am an adjunct Professor (Privatdozent) at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, where I have been teaching since 2005. In 2015, I taught as affiliated faculty at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. From 2000 to 2012, I was a senior Faculty member at the European Southern Observatory. Since 2008, I was working as the Project Scientist for the European Extremely Large Telescope Project, and shared my time between project work and astronomical research. As for my early careeer: I obtained my PhD in early 1997 from the University of Bonn, then moved on postdoctoral position (partly on a Feodor-Lynen stipent from the Humboldt Foundation) to the University of California Observatories at the UC Santa Cruz where I have spent nearly two years. I came to ESO in late 1998 on a fellowship and moved on a faculty position in early 2000 to serve as instrument scientist. Over the next years, I worked on the instruments VIMOS, SINFONI, HAWK-I and KMOS.