Prof. Michael Backes is Associate Professor, Head of the Namibian H.E.S.S. group, and of astrophysics at the University of Namibia (UNAM), as well as Extraordinary Associate Professor at North-West University (South Africa) and Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford (UK). He received his PhD and MSc in gamma-ray astronomy from TU Dortmund University (D). He got appointed a member of the Global Young Academy (GYA) and elected to their Executive Committee. He is recipient of a UNAM Meritorious Award for Best Academic Performance in the Faculty of Science, and of a GfKl Application Award by the German Data Science Society (GfKl). He was rated an Established Researcher by the South African National Research Foundation, indicative of him belonging to the highest rated 1.5% of researchers in his age group. He is the Namibian lead for a Global Challenges Research Fund project and he also serves as the founding head of the Virtual Institute for Scientific Computing and Artificial Intelligence at UNAM. His research focuses on gamma-ray loud Active Galaxies, their multi-wavelength and multi-messenger emission, as well as their long-term behaviour, centred around observations with the H.E.S.S. gamma-ray telescopes. Besides that, he is active in the fields of advanced data analysis methods for very high-energy gamma-ray astronomy, and site-testing for future observatories. He is Co-PI of the Africa Millimetre Telescope (AMT) and actively works on its establishment and its science program. Besides this hard science research, he pursues societal impact-driven activities on astro-tourism and archaeoastronomy in Namibia.