Jörg-Uwe Pott

Jörg-Uwe Pott is a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), leading the Black Hole and Accretion Research/Instrumentation group within the Galaxies and Cosmology department. His work focuses on understanding massive black holes through high angular resolution instrumentation, including adaptive optics and interferometry. He develops techniques like astrometric pipeline for ground-based observations and contributes to major projects such as MICADO for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

Education and Early Career: He studied under Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckart at the University of Cologne and Dr. Andreas Glindemann at ESO. Postdoctoral roles included work with Prof. Andrea Ghez at UCLA and the W. M. Keck Observatory.

Research Interests: Instrumentation development for telescopes (e.g., LBT, VLT, Keck), astrometry to measure black hole masses, and imaging dusty environments around AGN. Key projects include MiAGN (mid-infrared AGN imaging), P-REx (fringe tracking algorithms), and Dust Reverberation Mapping (DRM).

Collaborations: Long-term partnerships with groups at MPE (Reinhard Genzel), INAF (Paolo Ciliegi), and AIP (Martin Roth). Instrument roles include MICADO instrument scientist and OVMS (vibration monitoring system) developer.

Labs: Leads KOOL (Königstuhl Observatory Opto-mechatronics Laboratory) and contributes to KING (teaching telescope). Teaches experimental astronomy and instrumentation at Heidelberg University.