I’m a tenured full professor now! I’ve started my new position, a joint professorship at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the University of Potsdam, this autumn. I had a very good time in Belfast, but it’s really nice to be back in my home country and have continued access to European funding, whatever will happen with Brexit. Fortunately my two PhD students in Belfast are both in their final year now, so I can supervise them from afar as they’re pretty independent now.

My new office is in one of the historical observatory buildings at AIP, which is quite fancy. Also, the new position comes with a good chunk of funding, plus I am very happy that I was awarded a large grant by the Leibniz Association (similar to an ERC starting grant). So there will be lots of hiring over the next year! I did my PhD in a very large group, and I was always hoping that I would be able to build such a large research group myself – looks like that is actually happening now 🙂