Ralf Takors, born in Koblenz in 1966, studied mechanical and process engineering at RWTH Aachen, where he also obtained his habilitation with a dissertation entitled “Metabolic and Bioprocess Engineering – A Fruitful Symbiosis”. He worked at Evonik Degussa GmbH from 2004 to 2009 and has been the director of the Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, since 2009.

Prof. Takors holds leadership positions in various professional associations, including "Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering", "Engineering Life Science" and the "Center of Systems Biology" at the University of Stuttgart. In 2001 he received the Dechema Young Professor Award.

Ralf Takors is now heading the Institute of Biochemical Engineering (IBVT) at the University of Stuttgart. Main research interests are systems metabolic engineering, synthetic biology and biochemical engineering to develop novel bioprocesses from lab to productions cale. Wet-lab activities are supported by intensive modelling activities comprising genome scale stochiometric modelling, metabolic flux analysis, gene regulatory networks, and bioreactor modelling using compartmented approaches and computational fluid dynamics.