ACADEMIC POSITIONS

Academic Experience

Pletser worked as a Junior Assistant Professor during his studies, from 1978 to 1980, at the Department of Mechanics of the Faculty of Applied Sciences, Catholic University of Louvain UCL, Belgium, for the courses of Regulation and Automatism and Ship Inertial Navigation.

In 1982, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of the Faculty of Sciences, Catholic University of Louvain UCL, and detached until 1985 at the University of Kinshasa, Congo (ex-Zaire), where he lectured and gave practical exercise sessions for the courses of general physics, electricity, magnetism, optics, vibrating phenomena, astronomy, geophysics, analytical mechanics, transform theory, and numerical analysis. He contributed to several syllabi and coordinated physics laboratory sessions and astronomical observations. He served as the representative of Professor Assistants in Physics Department councils at the Faculty of Sciences.

Between 1982 and 1985, he followed International Post-University Courses in physics and mathematics at the Department of Physics of the Faculty of Sciences of the Universities of Liège (1984) and Gent (1985), and a retraining period in astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics G. Lemaitre of the Faculty of Sciences, Catholic University of Louvain UCL (1985).

After leaving Africa and joining ESA, he was invited in 1993 to give a series of seminars and conferences at the University of Bujumbura, Burundi, with Prof. H. Reeves. He was further invited to give a series of lectures at the University Mapon of Kindu, in R.D. Congo in 2018 and 2019. He brought a telescope to the University for the students to observe planets and stars.