Director of the Institute
Professor Dr. André Thess (born 22 February 1964) is the director of the Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) – DLR – and head of the Institute of Energy Storage at the University of Stuttgart. His research interests are in thermal energy storage, electromagnetic processes and high-temperature measurement technology. Professor Thess’s textbook “The Entropy Principle – Thermodynamics for the Unsatisfied” helps mechancal engineering and physics students to better understand the mathematical foundations of entropy.
Professor Thess received PhD (summa cum laude) in 1991 from Dresden University of Technology. Between 1991 and 1993 worked as a post doctoral research associate at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, at the Institute de Mécanique de Grenoble (France) and as a fellow of the German Research Council (DFG) at Princeton University. In 1995 he received his habilitation (German second doctoral degree) in theoretical physics. In 1998, he was appointed as Professor of Engineering Thermodynamics at Ilmenau University of Technology at the age of 34 years.
His research achievements have been awarded with guest professorships at the University of Nagoya (Japan), at Stanford University (USA) and at Northeastern University Shenyang (China). In 2007 he received the Thuringian Research Award “Thüringer Forschungspreis” for his contributions to electromagnetic flow measurement.
From 2010 to 2014 Professor Thess served as a member of the board of the International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM). Since 2002 he has been a lifetime member of the American Physical Society and a member of the German Physical Company. Since 2008 Professor Thess has been member of the scientific board (Fachkollegium) DFG 404 for Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics, which he has been representing as a chairman from 2012 to 2016. From 2010 up to 2013 Professor Thess was the chairman of the DFG research training group “Lorentz Force Velocimetry and Lorentz Force Eddy Current Testing“ Ilmenau University of Technology.
André Thess is married and father of two children. He dedicates his leisure time to the culinary thermodynamics and the Chinese language.