Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a professor for astrobiology and planetary habitability at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, and president of the German Astrobiology Society. Dirk has published many papers and books in his field, including the 3rd edition of Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints and The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds. In 2010 he received the Friedrich-Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation for extraordinary achievements in
theoretical biology. Dirk has given many interviews in scientific television documentaries such as National Geographic and Discovery Channel (USA), NHK-TV (Japan), ARD and RTL (Germany). He regularly writes blogs,
initially for the Smithsonian Magazine, and now for BigThink.com