This year is already shaping up to be one of growth, as we welcome four new additions to our Vienna-based team, all of whom will help to contribute to and advance ESPI’s mission as the European independent think tank for space.
So far this year, we are pleased to welcome:
- Luis Cortes Kollert as our new Events & Engagement Officer;
- Emily Wallis as our newest Junior Research Fellow;
- Weronika Krzyzak as our newest Research Intern; and
- Franziska Kändler as our latest Visiting Researcher.
Luis Cortes Kollert was born in Kuala Lumpur and raised in a multicultural environment by a Portuguese mother and German father, visiting schools in Laos, Malaysia, Munich and Rome. He has always enjoyed not just working but living in an environment where different ways of thinking and doing things have existed alongside each other, allowing them to influence each other in the process. At school, he was particularly interested in history and politics to understand how we have the potential to not just to be impacted by change but agents of it.
Emily Wallis completed her bachelor’s degree in Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge, specialising in Latin American Studies. As part of her degree, she spent six months in Vienna and six months in Colombia, where she volunteered on community-based projects and visited the Amazon Basin. Witnessing first-hand the region’s natural beauty alongside its environmental and socio-economic challenges inspired her to shift her focus toward environmental issues. She went on to complete an MSc in Environmental Science and Policy at Central European University in Vienna, focusing her thesis on disaster management and drought in northern Madagascar. During her MSc, she was introduced to the world of remote sensing and geospatial technologies through an environmental practicum at UNOOSA/UN-SPIDER, which led to a six-month internship at UN-SPIDER. This reinforced her commitment to addressing environmental challenges through space-based solutions.
Weronika Krzyzak holds a BA degree in European Legal Studies from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, during which she also spent a year in Padova, Italy as an exchange student. Weronika also graduated with an LLM in Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law from Trinity College Dublin. Here, she participated in different international projects and conferences concerning international, European, intellectual property, and space law. In 2024, she also completed an ECSL/ESA Summer Course on Space Law and Policy. Her main fields of research interest are international and European Law, space policy, and the intersection of IP and space law, especially regarding the gaps within the current IPR framework concerning different space-related inventions.
Franziska Kändler was born in Germany and is currently completing a master’s degree in European Security Policy at Sciences Po in Paris. She started her career as an intern at the German Federal Foreign Office and the German Parliament before joining the Prague Security Studies Institute in their Space Security Program. Franziska’s academic focus is on emerging technologies, strategic trade controls and space policy, particularly in U.S.-China relations. While at ESPI, she will be finishing her master’s thesis on U.S. commercial-military space integration.
