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Rudi Balling (born 17 October 1953 in Daun-Pützborn) is a german geneticist. Since 2001, he is the scientific director of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany.

Biography
Following his abitur (1972) at the Geschwister-Scholl Gymnasium in Daun, Germany and military service, Rudi Balling studied Food Science from 1974 to 1980 at the University of Bonn, Germany and at the Washington State University in Pullman, USA. Afterwards Rudi Balling received his PhD (Dr. troph.) for his studies on embryotoxicology at the RWTH Aachen and at the NIEHS (NIH).

From 1984 to 1986 Rudi Balling researched imprinting mechanisms in developmental biology with Prof. Dr. Janet Rossant at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada, one of the leading labs in that field. Afterwards he moved to the lab of Prof. Peter Gruss at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany where he was involved in clarifying morphogenetic mechanisms during development.

In 1991 Rudi Balling took his Habilitation and was appointed leader of a team in the Department of Prof. Dr. Davor Solter at the Max Planck Institute for Immunbiology in Freiburg, Germany. From 1993 until 2000 he was Director of the Institute for Mammalian Genetics at the GSF-Research Centre for Health and the Environment (renamed Helmholtz Zentrum München). In 1994 he accepted an extraordinary professorship at the RWTH Aachen, followed in 1998 by the Chair of Developmental Genetics at the Technical University of Munich.

Since 2001 Rudi Balling is Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), previously called Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung (GBF), in Braunschweig, Germany and an honorary professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Under his leadership the center shifted its focus to infection research that pursued previously of biotechnology.

About 125 of his publications are listed in the Science Citation Index. These have been cited more than 5000 times. Rudi Balling`s Hirsch-Index is 39.

He is married with two children.

Honors and prizes

 * Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan (2007)
 * Guest Professor, College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China (2006)
 * Member of the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (2002)
 * Honorary Member der Japanese Society of Inherited Metabolic Disease (1999)
 * Honorary Member der Association of American Anatomists (1999)
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Preis der RWTH Aachen (1992)
 * DFG-Scholarship, Mount Sinai Research Institute, Toronto, Canada (1984 – 1986)
 * DAAD-Postgraduate Scholarship, NIEHS (NIH), N.C.,USA (1981 – 1982)
 * Fulbright Scholarship and Exchange-Scholarship of the University of Bonn and Washington State University, Pullman, USA (1978-1979)

Membership of scientific societies

 * President of the Verband der Biologie, Biowissenschaften und Biomedizin in Deutschland (VBIO, since2007)
 * President of the Verband der biowissenschaftlichen und biomedizinischen Fachgesellschaften (Vbbm, 2003-2007)
 * President of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Genetik (GfG, 2002-2004)
 * President of the International Mammalian Genome Society (IMGS, 2001-2002)

Rudi Balling is a member of several senats and advisory boards.