Germany’s Higher Education Landscape: Innovations, Challenges, and Opportunities

The ACG and the Heidelberg University Association will host a breakfast roundtable with Professor Dr. Frauke Melchior, Rector of the University of Heidelberg.

Frauke Melchior has been Rector of Heidelberg University since October 2023. As Rector, she is responsible for the university’s overall development and strategic orientation, the governance of the Excellence Strategy, as well as appointments to professorships. She is also head of the University Senate and all of its committees. Frauke Melchior studied chemistry at the University of Marburg and the University of Bristol (UK) and in 1990 earned her doctorate in Marburg on a biochemical topic. As a postdoctoral researcher in the field of molecular cell biology, she first worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and from 1992 at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (USA).

In 1998 Frauke Melchior started the first research group of her own at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich. Six years later she accepted a professorship for biochemistry in the field of human medicine at the University of Göttingen. In 2008 Frauke Melchior was appointed Professor of Molecular Biology at Heidelberg University. From 2021 to 2023 she was a member of the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich, one of the research centers in the Helmholtz Association, where she was responsible for Scientific Division III – Life Sciences.