Martin Pohl

Astroparticle physics

Martin Pohl is Lead Scientist at DESY in the field of astroparticle physics and Professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Potsdam. Together with his team, he studies energetic particles in the universe, their sources, their interactions with their environment and their decay products.

The universe harbours systems that are capable of accelerating individual particles to energies many orders of magnitude higher than is possible with human-built accelerators. What drives these systems is a major question in physics, and understanding them has far-reaching implications. Scientific questions include, for example: How do cosmic sources accelerate particles to very high energies? How are jets and energetic particles formed in supermassive black holes? What is the dark matter in the universe made of?

 

Academic career

since 2009 Lead Scientist at DESY
Professor at the University of Potsdam
2007-2009 Associate Professor, Iowa State University, USA
2003-2007 Assistant Professor, Iowa State University, USA
2002-2003 Lecturer, Ruhr University Bochum
1999-2002 Research and Teaching Associate, Ruhr University Bochum
2002 Habilitation in Theoretical Physics, Ruhr University Bochum
1997-1998 Research Associate, Danish Space Research Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark
1994-1997 Research Associate, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching
1990-1993 Research Associate, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn
1991 PhD, University of Bonn