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President
Front office
Maike Breit
Building A2 3, Room 1.04
Phone: +49 681 302-2000
Fax: +49 681 302-3001
assistenz.praesident(at)uni-saarland.de
Personal adviser to the University President
Christian Humm
Phone: +49 681 302-2130
referent(at)uni-saarland.de
What makes Saarland University unique?
Saarland University is the largest of the higher education institutions in Saarland. As a public research university offering academic programmes in a very wide range of disciplines and as an important centre of scholarship, innovation and research, the university is an important driver of development in Saarland and neighbouring regions. As well as its excellent reputation for cutting-edge research, Saarland University offers an attractive and diverse range of study programmes for students from all over the world.
The university actively encourages technology and knowledge transfer to industry and is an important incubator for business start-ups. Saarland University offers a wide range of employment opportunities and a diverse, international and culturally rich campus. It maintains close collaborative ties with the numerous external research institutes located on or near the Saarbrücken campus. The university’s strong international presence is being actively expanded through partnerships with national and international universities and through its coordinating role in the European university alliance Transform4Europe.
Where is Saarland University headed?
As President of Saarland University, I want us to retain our competitiveness in the national and international higher education landscape and continue developing our outstanding strengths. Our goal is to maintain the excellent academic supervision we offer our students while fostering high-quality research in our flagship research areas. We also need to implement the necessary improvements to campus infrastructure as well as mitigate the effects of earlier cost-cutting programmes. In the face of ongoing climate change, I am keen to establish sustainability as a new core research area at the university.
I also want our students to build a strong connection with Saarland University by offering them a diverse range of on-campus opportunities and experiences at our Saarbrücken and Homburg campuses. An enriching campus life not only makes our university more attractive to international students, it also helps to strengthen the bond that our students and staff feel towards the university.
Personal bio
Academic career
Ludger Santen was born in 1969 in the town of Haren, close to the German-Netherlands border. He studied physics at the University of Cologne. After completing his doctorate, he worked at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris for two years as a research fellow funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
In 2001, Ludger Santen moved to Saarland University, where he was head of an Emmy Noether junior research group in the Department of Theoretical Physics for four years. From 2006 to 2015, he was spokesperson for the DFG Research Training Group ‘Structure Formation and Transport in Complex Systems’.
In 2006, Ludger Santen was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at Saarland University. As a member of the University Senate (2008–2010), spokesperson for the Department of Physics (2020–2022), Head of the Center for Biophysics (since 2017) and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology (since 2022), he has gained a wealth of experience in the academic administration of the university and in the acquisition of external funding.
Ludger Santen conducts research into the statistical physics of biological and non-equilibrium systems. The focus of his work is on intracellular transport processes and the dynamics and mechanics of filaments.
He is also interested in modelling bacterial adsorption and the development of bacterial colonies. These research interests are also the focus of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre 1027 ‘Physical Modelling of Non-equilibrium Processes in Biological Systems’ to which Ludger Santen and his research group contribute.