Maurizio Falanga was born in Basel, Switzerland and graduated in Theoretical Physics at the University of Basel. He received his PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy. Afterwards he held various research fellowship positions in astrophysics departments around Europe and USA. His scientific background is in high-energy astrophysics (hot universe and compact objects). He is author and co-author of over 200 published papers and (co-)editor of several books in his research fields. Maurizio Falanga habilitated at the University of Basel in 2014. He has been invited to serve on a number of high-level international committees. From 2009 to 2021 he was Scientific Program Manager at International Space Sincere Institute in Bern, Switzerland (ISSI), and from 2013 to 2019 he was appointed the first part-time Executive Director of ISSI-Beijing, China. Since 2021, he has been appointed as Professor of Space Science at the University of Bern and Director of the International Space Sincere Institute in Bern, Switzerland.