Professor Aiko Voigt was appointed Professor for Atmospheric Dynamics (W3) in the Meteorology Section of the Institute for Geosciences at the University of Bonn on September 1, 2026. After studying physics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, he turned his attention to climate research in 2007. During his doctorate at the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, he investigated the climate dynamics of the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis, an extreme state in which the planet’s surface is believed to have been more or less covered with ice. Following research visits to Paris and New York, he led a research group at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on the coupling between clouds and extratropical atmospheric circulation. He was appointed Professor for Climate Science at the University of Vienna in 2021.
His research focuses on how cloud processes interact with atmospheric circulation patterns and with climate and weather events at a regional and global level. Clouds are a vital yet highly complex part of the atmosphere, influencing how much of the Sun’s energy reaches the surface of the Earth and how much heat it radiates back into space. In his work, Voigt makes particular use of simulations of the atmosphere and the climate system on high-performance computers. Besides the climate system as it is now, he also studies extreme climate states that the Earth has experienced over the course of its history as well as the habitability of Earth-like exoplanets.