Eric Sonnendrücker, born 1967 in Strasbourg, studied mathematics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Cachan. After taking his PhD in 1995 he did research in Germany and the USA before being awarded his lecturership five years later at Nancy University with a dissertation entitled “Mathematical Analysis and Numerical Simulation of Plasmas and Particle Beams” and being appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Strasbourg. Appointed jointly by the Max Planck Society and the Technical University of Munich in 2012, he on 1 September commences his research work as Scientific Member and head of the Computational Plasma Physics Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, and takes up a professorship for Applied Mathematics at the university.