Ulrich Walter, born in Iserlohn, Germany, received his PhD in the field of solid state physics from the University of Cologne. After two post-doc positions at the Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, Illinois, and the University of California at Berkley, California, he joined the German astronaut team and flew in 1993 on board the space shuttle Columbia on the STS-55 (Spacelab D-2) mission. From 1998 to 2003, he held various corporate positions at the IBM Research Center, Germany, and in 2003 accepted a professorship at the Institute of Astronautics, Technische Universität München, Germany. Professor Walter became known to a wider audience as presenter of MaxQ, a popular science show on German television, and is author of a number of popular science books on spaceflight and research.
Currently, the main focus of his scientific work is on satellite technology.