Michael Wise

Professor Michael Wise is an astrophysicist and the General and Scientific Director of SRON Space Research Organisation Netherlands. An expert in high-energy astrophysics and a Professor at the University of Amsterdam, he studies supermassive black holes and how they shape their galaxies.

Michael has spent most of his career building telescopes in space and on the ground. He helped build and launch NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and later worked on LOFAR, one of the world’s largest radio telescopes, and the early phases of the Square Kilometre Array.

Now at SRON, he leads an institute building instruments for missions of the next decade and beyond, such as LISA, the first gravitational-wave observatory in space, NewAthena, ESA’s next great X-ray telescope, and TANGO, twin satellites that will pinpoint greenhouse gas emissions on Earth. Michael brings an insider’s view of how new technology helps us unlock the secrets of the Universe.