posted 12-24-2014 12:07 PM               

Johann-Dietrich Wörner to be Director General of ESA

The Council of the European Space Agency announced on Dec. 18 the appointment of Johann-Dietrich Wörner as the next Director General of ESA, for a period of four years starting on 1 July 2015.

He will succeed Jean-Jacques Dordain, whose term of office ends on 30 June 2015.

Mr. Wörner is currently Chairman of the Executive Board of DLR, the German Aerospace Center.

Johann-Dietrich Wörner

Johann-Dietrich Wörner was born in Kassel in 1954. He has been Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) since 1 March 2007.

He studied civil engineering at the Technische Universität Berlin and the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, from where he graduated in 1985. In 1982, as part of his studies, he spent two years in Japan, investigating earthquake safety. Until 1990 Wörner worked for the consulting civil engineers König und Heunisch. In 1990 he returned to Darmstadt University, where he was appointed to a professorship in Civil Engineering and took over as Head of the Testing and Research Institute. Before being elected President of the Technische Universität Darmstadt in 1995, he held the position of Dean of the Civil Engineering Faculty.

Wörner has been honoured with a series of prizes and awards such as the Prize of the Organisation of Friends of the Technische Universität Darmstadt for 'outstanding scientific performance'. He was also appointed to the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and is a representative of the Technical Sciences Section of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Wörner has received honorary doctorates from the State University New York (USA), the technical universities of Bucharest (Romania) and Mongolia, the Saint Petersburg University for Economics and Finance (Russia), and École Centrale Lyon (France). He has been honoured by the German state of Hesse and the French government.

Wörner is Vice President of the Helmholtz Association; he is also a member of various national and international supervisory bodies, advisory councils and committees. He was a member of the board of École Centrale Paris and École Centrale Lyon, the Convention for Technical Sciences (acatech) and the supervisory board of Röhm GmbH, to name just a few. Furthermore, he was appointed to the energy expert group of the German Government. He continues to be a member of the advisory boards of several universities such as the Technische Universität Berlin and the IST Lisboa.

posted 01-08-2021 11:22 AM               

And now, the time has come

On 17 December 2020 a new Director General of ESA was elected by the ESA Council, meeting in restricted session. I have taken stock of the situation and especially the fact that my successor, Director for Earth Observation Josef Aschbacher, is already inside ESA. According to the decision of that Restricted Council, the official take-up of duty of Mr Aschbacher will occur not later than 1 July 2021. Together with the Chair of Council I have discussed a number of points, and in particular:

• The unique situation arising from the fact that the Director General-Elect is already an ESA Director;

• The duration of the transition and its consequences internally and externally;

• The period until the ESA Council at ministerial level in 2022;

• The outstanding negotiations with the EU on the FFPA [Financial Framework Partnership Agreement].

I indicated, in advance of the opening of the position of Director General, my readiness to leave the position as early as the Member States deemed appropriate in the light of the situation after the election of the new Director General.

Based on these various considerations the Chair decided, together with me, to propose to the ESA Council an official take-up of duty by the new Director General on 1 March 2021. The period until that date will be used to secure a smooth transition.

I anticipate that I am about to experience a very abrupt change in my life: in 1995 I went from being a professor of civil engineering to the post of President of the Technische Universität Darmstadt and ever since have been working directly under government hierarchies: first, in Germany, under 10 German Ministers and since 2015 under many ESA Ministers , from our now 22 Member States, 2 Associate Member States and Canada.

On 28 February I will probably leave the post of Director General of ESA and return to my professional background in civil engineering. I will look back on my time as Director General of ESA with great fondness. As I've said before, I consider it to be the most extraordinary job and a real privilege to be able to do it. But also, ESA is a very special organisation filled with a great many brilliant and highly dedicated people. People who, together with our Member States and industry, have consistently over many years achieved many great things. Of course, I will miss it.

How best to summarise my work these last 25 years at the helm of public organisations. Of course, I could pore over the record: a success here, a failure there. But, I prefer to quote the great Frank Sinatra and just leave it at this: "I did it my way."