Wijers was director for ten years: A directorship lasts five years, and can be extended for another five years. Under Wijers’ leadership, the API has grown considerably in both numbers and breadth, with interdisciplinary joint programmes such as GRAPPA and Origins, among other things. Huge strides have also been made in inclusion and diversity.

Dominik’s research is concentrated around the formation and evolution of stars and planets. He is mainly occupied with the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks surrounding young stars. These disks are the birthplaces of new planets – exoplanets – outside our own solar system.

Together with colleagues from ETH Zürich, Dominik was responsible for an important part of SPHERE, a new instrument created to study planets and disks which was built for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. In his research, he also focuses on numerical model calculations for analysing the evolution of protoplanetary disks and for simulating and studying the formation of new planets. The search for Earth-like planets and the big question "Are We Alone" requires collaboration with other disciplines, such as earth sciences, chemistry and biology. Dominik was closely involved in the formation of the Origins collaboration.

Dominik has been associated with the Anton Pannekoek Institute of the UvA since 1999, and held a temporary post as Special Professor for Exoplanets at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has authored numerous academic publications, including papers in Nature, Science, Astronomy and Astrophysics and The Astrophysical Journal.

In the coming years Dominik wants to give the scientists and students at the API scope to promote their excellent teaching and research and the interdisciplinary collaboration within and beyond the Faculty of Science, and to ensure that the API remains an inclusive, safe and above all a pleasant place to work.