Frank Postberg

Prof. Frank Postberg is a University Professor for Planetary Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin, leading the Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing group. He specializes in astrobiology and the exploration of icy ocean worlds such as Enceladus and Europa, using data from missions like Cassini-Huygens and Europa Clipper.

Education: PhD (2007) in Physics from Heidelberg University, followed by postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute and University of Stuttgart. He habilitated in cosmochemistry (2012) and received a Heisenberg Fellowship (2014).

Research focuses on the composition of plumes and subsurface oceans of icy moons, with projects like Habitat-OASIS exploring habitability. He co-leads experiments on interstellar dust (Destiny+ mission) and serves on ESA’s strategic mission teams.

Awards include the ERC Consolidator Grant (2017) for studying ocean world habitability. His lab develops advanced instrumentation like SUDA for compositional analysis of planetary materials.