About Stefan Immler

Dr. Stefan Immler is an astrophysicist at NASA Headquarter and a passionate photographer and documentary film maker.​

Stefan grew up in Germany in the Bavarian countryside and when his parents gave him his first Leica camera and a few rolls of film at the age of 16, his passion for photography ignited and he was hooked! Decades later and to this day, Stefan is still devoted to analog black & white film photography using a variety of 35mm, medium format, and large format film cameras, developing his own film.

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After graduating with a doctorate "cum laude" in astrophysics from the University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in 2000, Stefan permanently moved to the United States where he held postdoc positions at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, and the Pennsylvania State University in State College PA. In 2004, he took a position as a research scientist in astrophysics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2013, he joined NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, where he is managing scientific research programs and space missions in the Astrophysics Division at the NASA HQ Science Mission Directorate.

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Stefan has won numerous awards for his work as an astrophysicist, for his photography, and as a film maker. His feature documentary film "Oxygen for the Ears" about the history of jazz was screened in cinemas and has won 13 awards at international film festivals, among them "Best Documentary Film" at the Manhattan International Film Festival.