Florian Kehl
Dr. Florian Kehl
Life Detection Technologist, Physicist, Inventor & Engineer
Hi, my name is Florian Kehl, and I'm a Senior Scientist at the University of Zurich’s Space Hub and a Lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. I used to work at and with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for almost 7 years. I invent, design, and develop fully-automated instruments for in-situ liquid analysis for space biology, and the detection of biosignatures on future planetary missions to Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or other celestial bodies. I've been fascinated by space and its robotic exploration since my early childhood when I gave presentations about Mars rovers in elementary school.
As a prototype developer, I have had the chance to partake in several simulated Mars missions in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where we tested our remotely-controlled instruments on a rover. On another field trip to the Arctic, we evaluated our underwater robots, equipped with sampling and sensing platforms, in the icy ocean. Every morning, we drove several kilometers over the open sea ice with our snowmobiles, where we then released our robotic explorers, while armed locals protected us from roaming polar bears.
Short Professional Bio
Florian Kehl is a senior research and teaching assistant at the University of Zurich’s Space Hub and a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences' Space Biology Group. He used to work at and with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for almost 7 years. He develops instruments for in-situ liquid analysis for space biology, and for the detection of potential biosignatures on Mars, Europa, Enceladus, and other alien worlds.
Florian Kehl was a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow at JPL from 2016 to 2019 and a Technologist in the Chemical Analysis and Life Detection Group at JPL from 2019 to 2021. He received his BSc and MSc degree in nanoscience, major in physics, from the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Florian joined the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology CSEM Landquart, Switzerland, in 2007 to work on label-free optical biosensor systems. In 2009, he worked as a Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, at the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Centre (BSAC) in the electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS) department. From 2011 to 2015, he was a Ph.D. Student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zürich in the Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics (LBB) at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, in collaboration with CSEM and Optics Balzers AG.