Ursula Gather was born in Mönchengladbach, Germany. She is married and has two sons. Following the completion of her studies of Mathematics at RWTH Aachen University, she started to work as an assistant at the Department of Statistics and Business Mathematics at her alma mater in 1976. In 1979 she completed her PhD in Mathematics and in 1984 her Habilitation, both at Aachen.

In 1985, Ursula Gather received a professorship at the University of Iowa before accepting a chair position at Universität Dortmund (now TU Dortmund University) in 1986. She held the chair for Mathematical Statistics and Industrial Applications at Dortmund’s Faculty of Statistics until she took office as Rector. Her areas of interest included statistical model building and robust procedures, time series analysis and statistics in industry as well as methods of online monitoring in intensive-care medicine. Starting in 1997 she served as coordinator of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 475 »Reduction of Complexity in Multivariate Data Structures« for twelve years. She supervised 30 doctoral dissertations and six Habilitations. In addition to her own publications (approx. 160 refereed papers), she co-edited five professional journals and still serves as editor for two book series with Springer publishers. In 2010, she was appointed member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech).

Throughout her career she has received prizes and awards. Her diploma thesis was honored with the Springorum Medal, her doctoral dissertation with the Borchers Medal of RWTH Aachen University. In 1987, one year following her appointment at Universität Dortmund, she received the prestigious Alfried Krupp Award for young university professors then valued at 850,000 German marks. In 2001, the IREX Award of the Australian Research Council facilitated a research stay at La Trobe University, Melbourne. International guest professorships included University of Pune, India (1982), Yale University, USA (1990), Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, France (1994), and La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia (2001). She received offers to chair positions from universities in Karlsruhe (1990), Würzburg (1996), Aachen (2003) and Lancaster (2005).

Ursula  Gather has been engaged in university management for many years. From 1991-1994, she served as Dean of the Faculty of Statistics; from 1994-1998 she was Prorector for Research at Universität Dortmund.

Various positions in research organizations demonstrate Ursula Gather’s experience in the area of science and research management. From 1996 until 2002 she  was a member of the Scientific-Technical Committee of the executive board of the Forschungszentrum Jülich. For eight years, she served as a member in the executive board of the German Statistical Society (2000-2008).For four years she served as DFG liaison officer at TU Dortmund University. Between 2007 and 2011 she was a member of the council of the International Statistical Institute. From 2008 until 2012 she resided as Chairwoman of the DFG Review Board of Mathematics. And since 2007, she has been chairing the “Friends of Oberwolfach”. Between 2007 and 2012 she also served as Deputy Chairwoman of the senate of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). In 2009 the DFG appointed her a member of the workgroup for research-oriented standards on gender equality. She is also a member of the advisory board of the European Liaison Office of the German  Research Organizations (KoWi). Since September 2008, Ursula Gather has been serving as Rector of TU Dortmund University. In 2010, she became Chairwoman of the State’s Rectors’ Conference for North Rhine-Westphalia (LRK). In 2011, the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) elected her vice-president for teaching, studies and admission. At the end of 2011 she was appointed a member of the board of trustees of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation.

• More information on Prof. Ursula Gather’s research activities

Personal Assistant to the Rector
Eva Prost

Tel.: +49 (0)231 / 755-7553