Dr. Robert Pitz-Paal has been leading the Institute for Solar Research as one of two co-directors since June 2011. His work focuses on technical analysis and optimization of concentrating solar systems to generate electricity and fuel production. He studied physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1983 to 1988. He continued to study concentrating solar technology in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Ruhr University, from which he graduated in 1993. In the same year, he moved to the
German Aerospace Center in Cologne, where he held various positions in the Department of Energy Technology in the following years. In 2002, he took over the management of the Department of Solar Research at the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, Stuttgart, and was deputy director of the institute
from 2009 to 2010. He is now the managing director at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
