Role: Coordinator of “Complementary Science” in the PSM, auxiliary science cases coordination and member of the PSWT

Prof. Conny Aerts (Msc Mathematics, 1988; PhD in Astrophysics, 1993) is Director of the Institute of Astronomy at KU Leuven, Belgium, and Adjunct Professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She is a pioneer of the asteroseismology research domain and world expert in the field of stellar structure and evolution and variable stars. She has been strongly involved in space missions such as CoRoT, Gaia, Kepler and SDSS-V, and is currently Belgian PI of the PLATO mission and responsible for the auxiliary science cases coordination. She is holder of two ERC Advanced Grants and numerous awards and distinctions, including the 2018 Lodewijk Woltjer Lecture. She has supervised over 42 Master and 26 PhD students, and has been teaching various courses in the Bachelor of Physics and Master of Astronomy and Astrophysics at KU Leuven and Radboud University. She has (co-)authored over 300 refereed publications with over 14800 citations.