Dr. Hans J. Deeg received his PhD in 1993 from the University of New Mexico, USA. After completing several postdoctoral positions in the US and Spain, he became a staff scientist at the Instituto de Astrofísica (IAC) in 2006. 

His research primarily focuses on exoplanets, where he has participated in numerous projects related to their detection and characterization, with a current emphasis on preparing for the PLATO space mission scheduled for launch in 2026. For this mission, Dr. Deeg leads the scientific preparation for detecting circumbinary planets. He has published over 350 scientific articles, is a member of the IAU division F Planetary Systems and Astrobiology steering committee and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Handbook of Exoplanets.

During his stay at the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Dr. Deeg will collaborate with long-time colleagues involved in PLATO and other space missions, including Prof. Heike Rauer, the PLATO mission PI, and Drs. Juan Cabrera, Szilard Csizmadia, and Peter Klagyivik. The primary objective of the visit is to develop a 'community challenge' for detecting circumbinary planets with PLATO. This challenge aims to identify the most efficient algorithms for detecting various types of circumbinary planets using PLATO mission data. This visit will enable Dr. Deeg to advance the crucial first part of this project while strengthening IAC's involvement in the scientific preparation of PLATO.