Prof. Dr. Rudolf Neu

Academic Career and Research Areas

The field of research of Professor Neu (b. 1961) is plasma material interaction and its effect on high temperature plasmas. The main emphasis of this work is on the study of materials for the first walls of fusion reactors. 

After studying physics at the University of Tübingen and receiving his doctorate in nuclear physics in 1992, Professor Neu worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching. In 1996 he spent six months as a visiting researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). In 2004 he acquired his postdoctoral teaching qualification (habilitation) from the University of Tübingen for his work in the field of experimental physics. He was appointed adjunct professor at the same university in 2011. After spending a year (2011/2012) as task force leader at the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, UK, he returned to Germany to became head of the ITER Physics Department at EFDA, the European Fusion Development Agreement (2012/2013). Since 2014, within the framework of a dual appointment, he has been a professor at TUM and head of an independent research group at IPP. In the same year he was listed as one of the 'Highly Cited Researchers' (ISI list, category: engineering).