Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer is a German particle physicist and the Director General of CERN. Heuer studied physics at the University of Stuttgart. He then obtained his PhD at the University of Heidelberg under Joachim Heintze for his study of neutral decay modes of the Ψ(3686).His post-doc studies include the JADE experiment at the electron-positron storage ring PETRA at DESY, and from 1984, at the OPAL experiment at CERN, where he also became spokesperson of the OPAL collaboration for many years.Having been offered a full professorship for experimental physics at the University of Hamburg, Heuer returned to DESY in 1998. In 2004 he was appointed DESY's Research Director. In December 2007 the CERN research council announced that Heuer will take office as CERN's Director General starting January 1, 2009, following the term of Robert Aymar.