Heike Rauer

Heike Rauer is a German physicist and professor at Freie Universität Berlin, specializing in exoplanet research and planetary science. She advises the executive board of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) on European Space Agency (ESA) matters and leads the international instrument consortium for ESA’s PLATO mission, which aims to discover and characterize planets orbiting Sun-like stars. Her research focuses on the detection of Earth-like planets, planetary atmospheres, and the potential habitability of worlds beyond our Solar System.