Rolf Müller is Managing Director of the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Germany. He has held this role since 2009, and also heads the Department of Microbial Natural Products. Since 2003, he has held a chair as professor of pharmaceutical biotechnology at Saarland University, Germany.

Rolf is involved in several national and international research networks and collaborations to identify novel bioactive natural products, analyze their biosynthesis and structures and develop their biological and chemical properties towards novel (pre)clinical candidates. He is elected member of both the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (ACATECH) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Prize in 2021, and the Charles Thom Award of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB) in 2023. Rolfs research activities are supported by a number of international institutions, including GARDP, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the TB Drug Accelerator, the Innovative Medicines Initiative, and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF).

Rolf studied pharmacy in Bonn, Germany and went on to obtain his PhD here in 1994. After a two-year research scholarship at the University of Washington in the USA, he became junior group leader at the Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung in Braunschweig. In 2000, he completed his habilitation thesis at the Technische Universität Braunschweig on the biosynthesis of antibiotics in actinomycetes and myxobacteria.

Image copyright © HIPS/Oliver Dietze