Matthias Steinmetz was born in 1966 in Saarbrücken, Germany. He studied mathematics and physics at the universities of Saarbrücken and Munich and obtained his Ph.D. in physics in 1993. He was visiting researcher at the Universities of California in Santa Barbara and Berkeley before he joined the Steward Observatory in Arizona as assistant professor in 1997. In 2002 he became director of the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam and professor at the Institute for Physics at Potsdam University. Since 2004 he is scientific chairman of the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam and speaker of the Managing Board.