Dr Josef Aschbacher

Josef Aschbacher became the ESA Director General on 1 March 2021. Born in Austria, Josef Aschbacher studied at the University of Innsbruck, graduating with a Master’s and a Doctoral degree in natural sciences. He became a research scientist at the university’s Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics from 1985 to 1989. He began his career in ESA in 1990 as a Young Graduate at ESRIN. From 1991 to 1993 he was seconded as ESA Representative to Southeast Asia to the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand, where he initiated major cooperation programmes between the EC, ESA and Southeast Asia. From 1994 to 2001 he worked at the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, where he was the Scientific Assistant to the Director of the Space Applications Institute, being responsible for scientific strategy and resource allocation. He returned to ESA headquarters, in Paris, in 2001 as Programme Coordinator, where he was primarily responsible for advancing Copernicus withi