About Me

I am an Aerospace Engineer and Planetary Scientist. I’ve worked on a variety of projects, ranging from the design of space missions to the modeling and simulation of planetary rings.

I’m one of the co-founders at satsearch, successfully incubated at the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centre in Noordwijk (ESA BIC Noordwijk), the Netherlands.

In 2010, I initiated an on-going, open-source project, to develop a toolbox for astrodynamics simulations called Tudat. The toolbox is being actively developed and maintained by staff and students in the Astrodynamics & Space missions research group at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology.

Based on the lessons I learned setting up and developing Tudat, I’m building a new collection of low-level, open-source C++ libraries for space simulation called openastro. Openastro libraries are intended to provide expert users with robust, highly-tested, low-level, functional building blocks to create space simulation software.

Some of my other experiences include:

• Working as Experienced Researcher (ER) within the Stardust network (EC FP7 Marie Curie ITN), leading projects to develop and design technologies for active debris removal.
• Serving as Analog Astronaut from 2015 to 2019 for the Austrian Space Forum’s Mars simulation missions
• Coordinating activities and representation for the Netherlands as co-National Point of Contact within the Space Generation Advisory Council.