The German Aerospace Center (known natively as Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has selected Pascale Ehrenfreund as their new Chair of the Executive Board. She currently serves as a Research Professor of Space Policy and International Affairs at the Space Policy Institute in Washington and as a member of the NAI University of Wisconsin team that investigates Hability, Life Detection, and the Signatures of Life on the Terrestrial Planets. She has made important contributions to several space missions at NASA.

Ehrenfreud established herself “as an astrobiologist with extensive scientific experience and an excellent reputation in teaching and research,” said Matthias Machnig, chair of the DLR Senate and State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, having taught and researched at universities in Paris, Vienna, Leiden, Washington and at JPL. She will be the first woman to take this position after a unanimous vote by the DLR Appointment Committee and Senate. DLR is the national research center in Germany for aeronautics, aerospace, ground transportation and energy.

More information is available in the DLR press release.