Dr. Günther Reitz

Günther Reitz was the key foreign researcher and the director of the CRREAT project.

He received his Diploma in Physics and Thesis in Biophysics at the University in Frankfurt. Günther Reitz was until his retirement the head of the Radiation Biology Department of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine of DLR from 2004 to 2015. Since 2015 he is working as a consultant of the Department. In May 2017 he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the Soochow University, Suzhou, China. The prime objective of his work comprises research on the radiation field in space especially for manned missions and its biological effects with the goal to provide an accurate assessment of the radiation exposures of astronauts to recommend radiation protection measures which pave the way to other planets.

Dr. Günther Reitz started his career as Co-Investigator in the Biostack Experiment flown in 1975 on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program. The method applied in the Biostack Experiments, the so called Biostack concept, allowed the first time to assign a radiobiological effect to the passage of a single heavy ion of the cosmic radiation. He was since this time Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator and Project Manager in numerous spaceflight experiments investigating the radiation environment and its biological effects using US and Russian spacecraft, and the International Space Station. He was the inventor, project manager and Principal Investigator of the ESA-MATROSHKA project, which allowed the first time to measure the depth dose profile of cosmic radiation in a human phantom outside and inside the ISS. All projects were performed successfully in collaboration with universities and organizations in US, Russia, Japan and Europe. A further milestone was his participation in the experiment “Radiation Assessment Detector” of the NASA Mars Science Lab Mission, in which the first measurements of the radiation inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars and on the Mars surface are provided.

Dr. Günther Reitz is acting chairman of COSPAR Commission F “Life Sciences as Related to Space” and permanent chairman of the Workshop of Radiation Monitoring on the ISS (WRMISS) since its foundation in 1996. He has established an international network in the field of radiation dosimetry in space and contributes to set up a European Program for Investigations into Biological Effects of space Radiation (IBER) which is complementary to the NASA space radiation health program. He is member of several national and international organizations and has more than 220 scientific publications.