Paola Caselli Appointed 2026 Oort Professor
Paola Caselli, Director at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, was named Oort Professor 2026 at University Leiden. She will deliver the Oort Lecture and follows Nobel laureate Reinhard Genzel as MPE’s second Oort Professor.
Paola Caselli, Director of the Center for Astrochemical Studies (CAS) at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), has been appointed the 2026 Oort Professor at Leiden University. This prestigious appointment includes the delivery of the annual Oort Lecture, a public presentation by a leading astronomer for a broad audience interested in astronomy. Professor Caselli follows in the footsteps of Nobel laureate and director of the Infrared-/Submillimeter Group, Reinhard Genzel, who held the Oort Professorship in 2000, making her the second researcher from MPE to deliver the Oort Lecture.
Caselli’s research focuses on the physico-chemical processes within dense molecular clouds, particularly during the earliest stages of star and planet formation. Her work has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of how stars and planetary systems emerge from interstellar material. She has been Director of the Center for Astrochemical Studies at MPE since 2014. In addition to her leadership role at MPE, Professor Caselli is an Honorary Professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a member of the Academy of Europe. Her distinguished international career includes research positions at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Leeds, and the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri in Florence.
About the Oort Professorship & Lecture:
The Oort Professorship and Lecture are named in honor of Jan Hendrik Oort (1900-1992), a pioneering astronomer and former professor at Leiden University. Oort’s groundbreaking research laid the foundation for our understanding of the Milky Way’s structure, the origins of comets, and the development of radio astronomy. He was awarded the Karl Schwarzschild Medal in 1972 by the Astronomical Society. Notably, Paola Caselli herself received the Karl Schwarzschild Medal last year, recognizing her own groundbreaking contributions to astrochemistry and star formation.
