Special guests

Dr. Maximilian Günther is an exoplanet scientist and current European Space Agency (ESA) Research Fellow. There, he and his team focus on working with space missions, supported by telescopes in South American deserts and the Antarctic. But they also work with colleagues in chemistry and biology laboratories to unveil the most burning astrobiological questions – such as the origin and prevalence of life on Earth and beyond.

Dr. Günther was a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2018 until 2021. He wrote his doctoral thesis on exoplanets in 2018 at the University of Cambridge under Nobel laureate Prof. Didier Queloz, the shared discoverer of the first exoplanet around a Sun-like star in 1995. Previously, Dr. Günther conducted research on Alzheimer’s disease in fruit flies at the University of Texas at Austin and on black holes at the University of Würzburg.

He will be with us on 08.07 and will present a lecture on “Temperamental teenage stars creating and destroying alien life”.

💫 Can we make space fiction a reality? 🧐

No, we’re not talking about some space utopia, we’re talking about a real existing idea by the American company Axiom Space! And if we’ve all heard of the profession of “talent hunter”, there is also one called “astronaut hunter” – which is exactly the vocation of the latest guest of Aniventure Comic Con – Simon Jenner!

He is working to elevate the global space ecosystem through Axiom Space’s unique position as the sole provider of private astronaut missions to the International Space Station. Simon holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of Adelaide and a Master of Science in Space Studies from the International Space University.

If you are interested to know what qualities people flying in space should have and how the first private space station was created, Simon will answer these and many other questions in his talk “Turning Science Fiction into Reality” on 09.07.(Sunday).