Rudi Balling, PhD, is a geneticist. He studied nutrition at the Universities of Bonn and Washington State University, USA and received his PhD in Human Nutrition from the University of Aachen, Germany. In 1993, he became director of the Institute of Mammalian Genetics at the GSF National Research Center for Environment and Health in Munich, after completing research posts at Mount Sinai Research Hospital in Toronto, Canada and the Max Planck Institutes of Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and Immunbiology in Freiburg, Germany. In 2001, he took over the position as scientific director of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig. Prior to his appointment as director of the LCSB in 2009, Professor Balling was a guest professor at the Broad Institute of MIT/Harvard University in Boston, USA.