ESO Department of Communication

Contact Us

Please direct all inquiries and requests (English language is preferred) to this address:

ESO Department of Communication,
Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2
D-85748 Garching bei München
Germany

Tel: +49 89 3200 6291
Fax: +49 89 3200 2362
Email: information@eso.org


The Team

Our team consists of in-house staff, collaborators and interns. Some work full-time, some part-time. We also collaborate with volunteers.

A list of students and previous interns/visitors is available.

 

Head of the Department of Communication

Anna-Lynn Wegener

Head of the Department of Communication

Email: Anna-Lynn.Wegener@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6211



Administration

Susana Almagro Garcia

Administrative Assistant

Susana is the ESO Department of Communication Assistant at ESO's Headquarters in Garching. Her work includes providing administrative, travel, procurement and budget support for the department. Besides these duties, she also is in charge of logistics for the science communication internships, trainees, apprentices, students, visitors and volunteers. She coordinates events and projects as well as assisting with the budget and the coordination of payments.

Email: salmagro@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6291




Media Relations Team

Mariya Lyubenova

Head of Media Relations Team

Mariya is the Head of the Media Relations Team, whose goal is to bring to the attention of the media, educators, decision-takers, local communities, and the public in general the most important scientific and technological achievements of the astronomical users community of ESO and its 16 member states. Mariya leads a culturally diverse team of science communicators, writers, visual artists, image processing specialists and social media experts. The MRT is responsible for the preparation of press releases, announcements, video casts, social media campaigns, exhibitions and other.

As a member of ESO’s astronomers faculty, Mariya is pursuing an active research program in the area of galaxy evolution, as well as supervises master and PhD students and mentors junior researchers. Born and completed a BSc and MSc in Bulgaria, Mariya obtained her doctorate in astronomy from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich in 2009, after pursuing 3 years of research at the ESO Headquarters in Germany. After that she worked as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany and then at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, before re-joining ESO in 2017.

Email: mlyubeno@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6188


Bárbara Trovão Ferreira

Media Manager

Bárbara is responsible for managing the production of the ESO news items and acts as ESO’s interface with the media. She started her science communication career as a science writing intern at ESO back in 2011. She then moved to the European Geosciences Union where she worked for 8 years as media and communications manager, before returning to ESO. Originally from Portugal, she has a degree in astronomy from the University of Porto, and a masters and PhD in mathematical astrophysics from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Email: Barbara.Ferreira@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670


Juan Carlos Muñoz Mateos

Media Officer

As Media Officer, Juan Carlos contributes to shape and implement ESO’s online presence and strategy. After completing his PhD in Astrophysics at Complutense University in Madrid, he worked for 3 years at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, USA. He then moved to Chile as an ESO Fellow and later became a Staff Astronomer. At ESO he combined his research on galaxy evolution with duties at Paranal Observatory, and promoted ESO’s science and facilities online via his astrophotography. He subsequently decided to put these skills to work in the field of astronomy communication as a full-time career. After working as one of the coordinators of the IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Education in Heidelberg, he returned to ESO and joined the Department of Communication in Garching.

Email: jmunoz@eso.org
Tel.: +49 89 3200 6176

 

Paola Amico

Science Liaison

Paola holds a Doctorate in Astronomy from Padova University, Italy. In 1994 she started as science fellow at ESO, in a wave of enthusiasm from her visits as a student that had her enjoying ESO's coffee since 1989; already in 1995 she moved her fellowship to the Detector Group of the Instrumentation Division, to follow a more technology-oriented career in astronomy. She became staff member at ESO in the Data Management Division in 1998, as Data Quality Control Scientist for ISAAC and NACO. In 2001 she moved to Hawaii, to enjoy tropical beaches and to work at Keck Observatory as Instrument Scientist for LRIS and eventually OSIRIS, following her interest in Adaptive Optics assisted Astronomy.

In 2005 she became Staff Astronomer at Paranal Observatory, thus re-joining ESO in a different continent. She was instrument scientist of NACO and SINFONI and leader of the Adaptive Optics team. In the 8 years as astronomer at the observatories, she participated in more than 30 different instrument commissioning and upgrades, and passed the 1200-nights mark as observer. Returning to regular daytime-work happened in 2009, when she closed a geographical and career triangle, as System Engineer in the Instrumentation Division of ESO. She currently works on ELT-related projects, such as MAORY, MICADO and the Wavefront Sensing Cameras, and supports the Department of Communication as Science Liaison. Asteroid #454350 discovered by WISE is named after her.

Email: pamico@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6927



 

Internal Communication

Douglas Pierce-Price

Head of Internal Communication

Email: dpiercep@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6759


 

Gabriela Gajardo

Internal Communication Chile

Email: ggajardo@eso.org
Tel: +56 2 463 3093



Communication Chile

Laura Ventura

Head of Communication Chile

 

Email: lventura@eso.org
Tel: +56 2 463 3265



Francisco Rodríguez

Media Officer in Chile

Email: frrodrig@eso.org


Sofía Otero Cavada

Outreach Officer in Chile

Sofía Otero Cavada is a journalist from Universidad de Chile, with a Master in Science Communication from the University of Otago (NZ). Before joining ESO, she worked in the field of promoting sciences for 10 years, with an emphasis in earth sciences and energy, for public universities and local public research centres in Chile. Since 2014, she has been teacher at the Diploma on Science Communication, at Universidad de Chile, and also teaches workshops in the area for professionals, researchers, undergraduate & graduate students. She has created and been in charge of a broad variety of contents and activities, in particular, books, exhibitions and online educational material for different audiences.

Email: Sofia.Otero@eso.org
Tel: +56 2 463 3123



Creative Team

Martin Wallner

Head of Creative Team

Email: Martin.Wallner@eso.org

 

Martin Kornmesser

Visual Artist

Visit Martin's Flickr page

Email: mkornmes@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6586


Herbert Zodet

Video Coordinator

Email: hzodet@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6422


Luis Calçada

Data Visualisations Artist

Luis studied Physics/Applied Math (Astronomy) but eventually gave up on the idea of becoming a real scientist. He got his first real job at a science centre in Portugal, where for 6 years he discovered, developed and matured his skills in visual science communication. At ESO he's part of the latter steps of the chain, in a group which tries to deliver to the public the extraordinary science there developed in the exciting and inspiring manner it deserves. His tools of choice are Maxon's Cinema 4D, Adobe's Photoshop and After Effects and a Wacom Intuos 3. When he has the time, he also likes to do some photography, a sample of which you can see on his Flickr page.

Email: lcalcada@eso.org
Tel: +49 3200 6855


 

Angelos Tsaousis

Video and Multimedia Generalist

A visionary storyteller whose look at impactful stories is both intimate and inspiring. With an MA in Communication Studies (University of Leeds, UK), Angelos has an extensive experience as a director, producer and filmmaker in the international documentary film industry since 2006. He has participated at numerous international film festivals like HotDocs, has received the Fulbright scholarship and the San Francisco Film Society Fellowship. He aims through his films to raise awareness and promote a dialogue on important social, environmental and science issues. As part of ESO's Creative Team his main objective is to visualize impactful science stories with a cinematic touch. He is constantly mastering his technical knowledge of filmmaking, editing and drone cinematography for sustaining and advancing his unique storytelling.

Email: Angelos.Tsaousis@eso.org
Tel: +49 3200 6549


 

Jutta Boxheimer

Print Coordinator

Email: jboxheim@eso.org
Tel: +49 3200 6332

Mafalda Martins

Print Assistant

Email: mmartins@eso.org
Tel: +49 3200 9020

 

Web Team

Raquel Yumi Shida

Head of Web Team

Raquel obtained a professional degree in architecture and urban planning at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, her home country. As an undergraduate student she also attended classes in various fields of science, built her own telescope and became an avid amateur astronomer, publishing data and articles on galactic and extragalactic stars. Since then she has worked at the Astronomy Department at the University of São Paulo, at NASA/STScI and at ESA/Hubble doing astronomy-related web design/development, scientific research and astronomy outreach. Today she is responsible for the web content and management of several websites for ESO and the International Astronomical Union.

A fraction of her publications in astronomy and science communication can be found on this NASA/ADS link

Email: rshida@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6177


Gurvan Bazin

Web & Advanced Projects Coordinator

Gurvan is a Full Stack Web Engineer. He got his PhD in Observational and Computational Cosmology in 2008 and worked on various international astronomical experiments, e.g. SPT, SDSS and LSST. He became an expert in data processing, data analysis and their counterparts in software engineering. In 2015, he started to work on the ESO Exposure Time Calculators, shifting focus towards Web Technologies. He is now responsible for the development and maintenance of the ESO and IAU websites.

Email: Gurvan.Bazin@eso.org
Tel: +49 89 3200 6872



Interns

 

Louisa Spillman

Intern Science Communication

Email: louisa.spillman@eso.org

 

Elena Reiriz Martínez

Intern Science Communication

Elena is a biologist originally from Asturias, northern Spain. After her bachelor’s degree at the University of Oviedo she moved to Germany for a master’s programme in neuroethology (neurobiology of animal behaviour) at the University of Würzburg. She then decided to branch out into science communication and completed an internship doing PR for a Wadden Sea National Park centre and a traineeship in the Science Education and Public Engagement office in EMBL Heidelberg. Now she’s at ESO to rekindle two of her old passions – astronomy and writing

Email: elena.reirizmartinez@eso.org

Davor Curic

Intern Science Communication

Email: davor.curic@eso.org