Curriculum vitae of Sami K. Solanki 

Sami K. Solanki is the Executive Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and head of the Solar and Heliospheric Department. He did his PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland, to which he returned after a post doctoral period at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. After a guest professorship in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and a professorship at the University of Oulu, Finland, he joined the Max Planck Society in 1999. He has been endowed with Honorary Professorships by the ETH and the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. Since 2009 he is in addition a Distinguished Professor, since 2014 an “Eminent Scholar”, at Kyung Hee University in Korea. His honours include the Bartels medal of the European Geociences Union and the yearly invitation to nominate for the Nobel Prize in Physics. 

His scientific interests are focussed on the physics of the Sun, including the Sun’s influence on the Earth’s climate. He has published over 400 refereed scientific papers and is Editor-in-Chief of the electronic journal “Living Reviews in Solar Physics” (impact factor of 13.8). He also founded the International Max Planck Research School on Physical Processes in the Solar System and Beyond, which has so far produced over 140 successful PhDs. He is leading the SUNRISE Mission of the German Space Agency, DLR, NASA and the Spanish Space Agency, is the Principal Investigator of the SO/PHI instrument on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter mission and is a Co-I of a number of further instruments on ESA and NASA space missions. He serves on numerous committees and panels, such as the Space Science Advisory Committee of ESA, and chairs the Programme Committee for Space Research of DLR.