Uwe Oberlack studied physics at the Technical University in Munich, Germany, from which he also received his Ph.D. for research performed at the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics with the COMPTEL gamma-ray telescope aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. For his thesis research on radioactive , including the generation of the first all-sky maps in this line, he was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal by the Max Planck Society in 1998. After post-doctoral research at Columbia University, working on a novel balloon-borne Compton telescope, he moved to Rice University in Houston, TX, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. While his research focus has since shifted to the direct search for dark matter with the XENON project, he continues to pursue interests in gamma-ray astronomy and its instrumentation.
