Congratulations! Today, 17th March 2020, TU Dresden’s Extended Senate has elected the psychologist and behavioural scientist Professor Ursula M. Staudinger to be the new Rector for a designated term of five years. She is scheduled to take office in mid-August 2020. 

In the run-up to the election, presentations were held at the University, during which Professor Ursula M. Staudinger highlighted the successful substantiation of TU Dresden’s University of Excellence application as a pivotal task for her tenure as Rector and thereby leading the University to a confirmation of its excellence status. To this end, the strengthening of broad interdisciplinarity on equal footing will be of crucial importance. Staudinger states that, naturally, excellent research must go hand in hand with excellent and innovative teaching. “In addition, I would like to develop TU Dresden into a global university for the 21^st century, and I see the 200^th anniversary in 2028 as an important milestone in this process.” TU Dresden can make decisive contributions to mastering the global challenges facing humanity and at the same time further expand its role as an important societal stakeholder.

As a former professor at TU Dresden, she was deeply impressed by the development of the University in recent years: “It was not least this performance curve of the University that motivated me to apply for the position of Rector.” Professor Ursula M. Staudinger has extensive leadership and management experience, not to mention excellent knowledge of other academic systems, which she would like to bring to TU Dresden, as well as her excellent international networks.

Professor Ursula Staudinger will introduce herself at a press conference in mid to end August and elucidate her plans.

Brief CV
Professor Ursula M. Staudinger studied psychology at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg and at Clark University in Massachusetts from 1978 to 1984. In 1988, she received her doctorate at the FU Berlin, where she also completed her habilitation (post-doctoral lecturing qualification) in 1997. Before Ursula M. Staudinger assumed the role of professor at TU Dresden from 1999 to 2003, she was a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. From 2003 to 2013, she was Vice President of Jacobs University Bremen and founding Dean of the Jacobs Center on Lifelong Learning and Institutional Development. Ursula M. Staudinger is an internationally renowned researcher on ageing. She currently holds a lifetime professorship in socio-medical sciences at the Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University in New York, which she founded in 2013.

Since 2012, Ursula M. Staudinger has been Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Institute for Population Research. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of which she was Vice President and Foreign Secretary from 2007 to 2017, and is active in numerous other national and international institutions and networks.

Further information: https://www.ursulastaudinger.com/profile

Media inquiries
Kim-Astrid Magister
Tel. +49 351 463 32398