Starmus VIII
Andreas Kaufer is a senior science leader at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). He earned his PhD in astronomy at Heidelberg University (1996) and joined ESO in 1999, contributing to the start of operations of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.
His scientific work focuses on high-resolution spectroscopy of massive, luminous stars, probing how their atmospheres, winds, and circumstellar environments evolve and vary over time; he also helped enable this science through major VLT instrumentation efforts, including the commissioning of UVES.
He later became Director of the La Silla–Paranal Observatory (2006) and has served as ESO Director of Operations (since 2008), overseeing observatory operations in Chile and ESO’s role in ALMA. In October 2025, the ESO Council appointed him as the next ESO Director General,
