Gaia People

Sebastian Els

European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC)

Sebastian joined the DPAC Project Office (PO) in October 2009 as Interface Engineer. The past five years he was working in the framework of the site selection for the Thirty Meter Telescope. Between 2004-2005 at Caltech and since then at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Before that, he worked in the adaptive optics team of the Isaac-Newton Group on La Palma. He studied Physics in Hamburg and Heidelberg and obtained a PhD in Astronomy in 2002 from the University of Heidelberg.

On 1 July 2013 Sebastian took on the position of Project Coordinator and Head of the DPAC Project Office at ESAC.

Apart from Gaia, his instrumentation interests are mainly in the areas of measuring optical turbulence and in adaptive optics. His scientific interests are in the areas of atmospheric physics and extrasolar planets.

[Published: 26/10/09]