Markus Boettcher did his Ph.D. work at the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy Bonn, Germany, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Bonn. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Rice University, Houston, TX, USA, 1997 – 2002 (including a NASA/SAO Chandra fellowship 1999 – 2002), before joining the faculty of Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA, in 2002, first as assistant professor, then (2007) as associate professor, and (2012) full professor. In 2013, he moved to South Africa to join the Centre for Space Research at NWU as SARChI Chair of Astrophysics and Space Physics. He is an internationally renowned expert on the physics of astronomical sources of high-energy (X-ray and gamma-ray) radiation. These include black holes in our Galaxy an in the centres of other galaxies, called active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts. His group is very actively involved in the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) near Windhoek, Namibia, which is the world’s most sensitive ground-based gamma-ray observatory. Markus Boettcher is the chairperson of the South African Gamma-Ray Astronomy Programme (SA-GAMMA), which co-ordinates the research activities and funding needs for about 100 members (permanent researchers, postdocs, students) at 6 institutions in South Africa and Namibia. In particular, SA-GAMMA co-ordinates the South African involvement in H.E.S.S. and the next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), currently under construction on the Canary Island of La Palma, Spain, and near Mt. Paranal, Chile.
Potch campus, G5, 216
