Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer is a German particle physicist and the Director
General of CERN. Heuer studied physics at the University of Stuttgart. He then obtained his PhD at
the University of Heidelberg under Joachim Heintze
for his study of neutral decay modes of the Ψ(3686).His post-doc studies
include the JADE experiment at the electron-positron storage ring PETRA at
DESY, and from 1984, at the OPAL experiment at CERN, where he also became
spokesperson of the OPAL collaboration for many years. Having been offered a
full professorship for experimental physics at the University of Hamburg,
Heuer returned to DESY in 1998. In 2004 he was
appointed DESY's Research Director. In December 2007
the CERN research council announced that Heuer will
take office as CERN's Director General starting January 1, 2009, following the
term of Robert Aymar.