Prof. ten Kate got her PhD from Leiden University in 2006 with work on laboratory investigations on organic material on the Martian surface. After working on Mars missions at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and as a visiting scientist at Oslo University, she returned to the Netherlands to join the Department of Earth Sciences in Utrecht. At API she will collaborate with the groups on Planet Formation and Exoplanets to place her work on organic materials and astrobiology into the context of exoplanets. She will also be teaching a class on Astrobiology. The appointment is for a period of five years.