Christian Hagen started his professional career at the Space Research Institute as a student on 1 April 2006. With a diploma thesis written at the IWF, he completed his electrical engineering studies at the Graz University of Technology in 2009. Christian developed into an inventive circuit designer, an excellent software developer, and a patient and precise integration and test engineer.
During his more than 16 years in the IWF magnetometer group, he has applied his extensive technical skills to the design, construction, and testing of numerous spaceborne instruments. They are, for example, on the way to Mercury aboard BepiColombo, orbiting Earth in different orbits with CSES and Magnetospheric MultiScale, and flying to Jupiter with the JUICE satellite next year.
In the course of his work, Christian Hagen was in regular exchange with colleagues from numerous national and international partner institutions (TU Graz, ZAMG, TU Braunschweig, Imperial College London, NSSC Beijing). His professionalism was appreciated as much as his personal commitment. Christian did not need many words to share his excellent ideas with the team and often stayed in the background with his modest manner.
With Christian Hagen, we lose a highly intelligent, conscientious and extremely obliging employee who was also close to many colleagues at the IWF as a friend. We mourn the loss of a valuable person and colleague who leaves a great gap as a member of our Institute. Christian will forever hold a special place in our memories.