Head of the Physical & Material Sciences Group in the Research & Exploration Department, DLR Space Agency

Since March 2020, Dr. Driebe has served as the head of the Physical & Material Sciences Group in the Research & Exploration Department of the The German Aerospace Center (DLR Space Agency), overseeing management and coordination of national and international projects related to microgravity research in physical sciences on various microgravity platforms, including drop towers, parabolic flights, sounding rockets, suborbital vehicles, and the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory. He also serves as an adviser to the ESA Programme Board for Human Spaceflight, Microgravity, and Exploration. His project portfolio covers fundamental research as well as application and exploration-oriented research and technology demonstrations and his science portfolio includes fundamental physics, quantum technologies, laboratory astrophysics, physics of complex fluids, combustion, and material sciences. Previously, Dr. Driebe completed his doctorate in 2001 from the University of Bonn on stellar evolution of asymptotic giant-branch stars and served as a postdoctoral at the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy studying stellar evolution of stars in late evolutionary stages, serving as a member of the international near-infrared spectro-interferometric instrument of the VLT interferometer instrument & science teams and performing infrared interferometric observation campaigns at the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile’s Atacama Desert. From 2009-2015 he served as a staff member in the Physical & Material Sciences Group of the Microgravity & Life Sciences Department at the DLR Space Agency, and from 2015-March 2020, he served as Head of the Physical & Material Sciences Group in the Microgravity & Life Sciences Department of the DLR Space Agency.