Prof Christian Doetsch (54, PhD in process engineering) has been working in energy research for around 30 years, most of this time at Fraunhofer UMSICHT. This is the largest process engineering institute of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the most important research organisation for applied research in Europe. He has headed the institute in various positions and responsibilities since 2022. As head of Fraunhofer UMSICHT, he leads a team of around 600 employees together with his colleague Manfred Renner and is responsible for a budget of around 70 million euros. His technological focus is on green hydrogen, decentralised energy systems, carbon management and the circular economy.

In 2015, Doetsch co-founded the award-winning start-up Volterion GmbH & Co. KG, which develops redox flow batteries. He gained worldwide recognition through the redesign of stacks, one of the main components of redox flow batteries. He, his team and representatives from Volterion were honoured with the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for this achievement in May 2021. The energy expert is also deputy spokesman for the Fraunhofer Energy Alliance and Task Manager for the Energy Storage Group at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Since January 2020, he has been Professor of Cross Energy Systems at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Ruhr University Bochum. In this role, he researches technologies for cross-sector energy systems.