Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla appointed as new Chair of the DLR Executive Board
Materials scientist and engineer Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla took up her new position as Chair of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) on 1 October 2020.
"I am looking forward to addressing the challenging task of leading a research institution as complex and interdisciplinary as DLR," says Kaysser-Pyzalla, who holds a doctorate in materials science. "DLR has seen strong growth over recent years, and now, together with all of our employees and across all research areas, we must make a decisive contribution towards strengthening Germany as a location for science and industry."
DLR's main areas of focus are aeronautics, space, energy, transport, security and digitalisation. With more than 9000 employees and 51 institutes and facilities at 30 locations across Germany, DLR ranks as one of the largest engineering research institutions in Europe. On 18 March 2020, the DLR Senate unanimously selected Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla as the new Chair of the DLR Executive Board for a term of five years. She will succeed Pascale Ehrenfreund, who led DLR for five years from August 2015.
Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla studied mechanical engineering at Ruhr University Bochum (Ruhr-Universität Bochum; RUB) and the Technical University of Darmstadt (Technische Universität Darmstadt), and received her doctorate from RUB in 1995. She went on to work for the former Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin and at the Technical University of Berlin (Technische Universität Berlin; TUB) for a number of years. In 2001, she was appointed to a teaching position at RUB. From 2003, Kaysser-Pyzalla was a professor at the Institute of Materials Science and Technology of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). Following her work there, she was appointed Director and then Managing Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH in Dusseldorf, and was appointed professor at RUB. In 2008 she became the Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy in Berlin, which was created under her leadership through the merger of two predecessor institutions. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla has served as President of the Technical University of Braunschweig since 1 May 2017.