Senate of the University of Mannheim Has Elected New Vice Presi-dents / Digitalization and Diversity Will Be Integrated More Deeply into the Work of the President's Office

Press release from 17  April 2024
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On 1 October, Professor Dr. Thomas Fetzer’s term as new President of the University of Mannheim will begin. The four Vice Presidents who will form the new President's Office, together with Professor Fetzer and the Executive Vice President, Dr. Katrin Schoppa-Bauer, have now been elected, On 17 April 2024, the Senate of the University of Mannheim, has elected Professor Dr. Jutta Mata, as Vice President for Research and Career Paths in Academia, Professor Dr. Heiko Paulheim as Vice President for Digitalization, Equal Opportunity and Diversity and Professor Dr. Cornelia Ruhe as Vice President for Student Affairs and Teaching. Professor Dr. Moritz, who has taken over the office of the Vice President for Sustainability and Information Provision in January 2023, has been re-elected. In his new term, he will be responsible for Sustainability and International Affairs.

“I am looking forward to working with the new members of the President’s Office. I am convinced that with this team, the university is ideally equipped for the challenges ahead. I am very happy that I was able to recruit four experienced colleagues from different disciplines to work together to further advance the university’s success,” says the designated President, Professor Dr. Thomas Fetzer. “By integrating digitalization into the President's Office for the first time, we are taking current developments into account and prepare the President's Office for the future. Digitalization will become even more important in research, teaching, and transfer,” Fetzer continues. ““Diversity in various dimensions has been an important extension of our equal opportunity work for some time now and should also be deeply integrated into the work of the President’s Office.”

The three-year term of office of the elected Vice Presidents will begin on 1 October 2024.

Professor Dr. Jutta Mata and Professor Dr. Cornelia Ruhe will replace Professor Henning Hillmann, Ph.D. (Research and Early-Stage Researchers) and Professor Dr. Annette Kehnel (Student Affairs and Teaching), whose term of office will regularly end on 30 September 2024.

Personal Profiles

Professor Dr. Moritz Fleischmann studied Business Mathematics in Bayreuth, Bordeaux, and Ulm. In 2000, Fleischmann received a PhD in General Management from Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands with a dissertation in reverse logistics. Until 2004, Fleischmann was Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods and then Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 2009, he came to the University of Mannheim, where he is holder of the Chair of Supply Chain Management. From 2011 until 2019, Fleischmann was academic director of the ESSEC – Mannheim Modular Executive MBA program of the Mannheim Business School. In 2019, he was acting dean of the Business School and from 2019 until 2020 vice dean of the school. Since January 2023, Moritz Fleischmann has been Vice President for Sustainability and Information Provision.

Professor Dr. Jutta Mata studied Psychology in Göttingen and Lissabon and at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She earned a doctorate from the International Max Planck Research School LIFE. After research stays in Lisbon, Stanford, and Basel, she was appointed professor at the University of Mannheim and has been holder of the chair of Health Psychology since 2015. Her research focuses on factors influencing health and disease, particularly in connection with nutrition, physical activity, and obesity. Mata is also co-director of the Mannheim Center for Data Science and associated researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. She is member of the interest group on humanity, climate, sustainability (“Mensch, Klima, Nachhaltigkeit”) of the German Psychological Society, of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Institute for Economic Research, of the Board of Trustees of GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and chair of the board of academic advisors of the socio-economic panel (SOEP). From 2018 until 2022, Jutta Mata was the university’s equal opportunity commissioner.

Professor Dr. Heiko Paulheim studied Computer Science at Hochschule Darmstadt and TU Darmstadt, where he earned a doctorate in 2011. During and after his doctoral studies, he was a researcher at TU Darmstadt and SAP Research and worked on using artificial intelligence to improve user interfaces. In 2013, Paulheim joined the University of Mannheim as a post-doctoral researcher. In 2014, he became junior professor of Web Data Mining. Since 2017, he is W 3 professor of Data Science and program director of the Mannheim Master in Data Science. His research focuses on knowledge representation and the responsible use of artificial intelligence.

Professor Dr. Cornelia Ruhe studied Romance Studies; Slavic Studies and English and American Studies in Regensburg and Konstanz. She earned her doctoral degree in 2002. In 2009, she earned a habilitation at the University of Konstanz. Since 2010, she has been professor of Romance Languages Linguistics and Media Studies at the University of Mannheim. Her research focuses on literature in French and Spanish, with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as on postcolonial literature and film. Intertextuality, cultural semiotics and cultural memory studies are at the center of her theory interests. Since 2016, Cornelia Ruhe is the publisher of Romanische Forschungen in the field of Literary Studies. In summer 2018, Ruhe was accepted into the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Since 2014, Cornelia Ruhe has been member of the Senate of the University of Mannheim and since 2022, she has been dean of the School of Humanities.

Contact:
Professor Dr. Moritz Fleischmann
Chair of Supply Chain Management
University of Mannheim
Telephone: +49 621 181-1655
E-mail: MFleischmannmail-bwl.uni-mannheim.de

Professor Dr. Jutta Mata
Chair of Health Psychology
University of Mannheim
Telephone: +49 0 621 181-2595
E-mail: matamail-uni-mannheim.de

Professor Dr. Heiko Paulheim
Chair of Data Science
University of Mannheim
Telephone: +49 621 181-2652
E-mail: heikomail-informatik.uni-mannheim.de

Professor Dr. Cornelia Ruhe
Chair of Romance Literary and Media Studies
University of Mannheim
Telephone: +49 621 181-2264
E-mail: cornelia.ruhemail-uni-mannheim.de

Linda Schädler
Head of Communications
University of Mannheim
Telephone: +49 621 181-1434
E-mail: schaedlermail-uni-mannheim.de