Jean-Pierre de Vera
2025
Anticipation Committee member
Pulse of Science
Jean-Pierre de Vera studied chemistry, botany, microbiology and geology at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and received his doctorate in biology. He was already enthusiastic about space travel at the age of 8 and was all the more pleased to get in touch with DLR during his doctorate. For the first time he was able to test organisms from alpine permafrost under simulated space conditions at the Institute for Aerospace Medicine in the Department of Radiation Biology in Cologne. After completing his doctorate, he remained connected to DLR during various research stays in Italy, England and Spain. During this time, he was already involved as a co-investigator in various space experiments such as BIOPAN 6 on the FOTON M3 satellite and LIFE on the EXPOSE-E exposure platform on the Columbus module of the ISS. Since 2009 he has been employed at the DLR at the Institute for Planetary Research in Berlin as part of the Helmholtz Alliance "Planetary Evolution and Life", where he worked as a topic leader on the topic of the physics of water on other planets and its importance for life. At the same time he took over the management of the Mars simulation laboratory from Prof. Dr. Moehlmann. In 2009/10 he took part in the first Antarctic expedition GANOVEX 10, where he collected samples for the ESA space experiment BIOMEX, which he has also been leading as chief scientist since 2010. BIOMEX was launched into space with a wealth of biological samples on July 24, 2014 with a Soyuz rocket and was mounted on the EXPOSE-R2 outside of the Russian Zvezda module with the help of two outboard missions by Russian cosmonauts, whereby after a successful space exposure these samples will return to the laboratories of his international cooperation partners and his laboratory for further analysis in 2016. Jean-Pierre de Vera and his international colleagues are currently preparing a new ESA space experiment called BIOSIGN, which is intended to simulate the environmental conditions of Mars and the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn in close Earth orbit. For this he needs new samples from the deep sea and also new samples from Antarctica. He will collect the samples during the GANOVEX 11 Expedition (2015/16) under the direction of the BGR in the Antarctic. The deep-sea samples are contributed by GEOMAR as part of the Helmholtz Alliance ROBEX.
