Inge Loes ten Kate appointed as Professor by special appointment for Planetary Sciences and Astrobiology

Inge Loes ten Kate (Department of Earth Sciences) has joined the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (API, University of Amsterdam) as of 1 September as a professor by special appointment for Planetary Sciences and Astrobiology. Prof. ten Kate got her PhD from Leiden University in 2006 with work on laboratory investigations on organic material on the Martian surface. After working on Mars missions at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and as a visiting scientist at Oslo University, she returned to the Netherlands to join the Department of Earth Sciences at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences.

At API she will collaborate with the groups on Planet Formation and Exoplanets to place her work on organic materials and astrobiology into the context of exoplanets. She will also be teaching a class on Astrobiology. The appointment is for a period of five years. She will also continue her work for the Department of Earth Sciences.