Professor Martin Grötschel currently holds the Chair of Information Technology at the Institute of Mathematics of the Technical University in Berlin, is Vice President of the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum Berlin (ZIB), and Secretary of the International Mathematical Union. He has chaired the Research Center Matheon "Mathematics for key technologies" funded by the Duetsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) from 2002 to 2008. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Engineering. He has received various academic awards including the Leibniz-Prize, the Beckurts Prize, the Fulkerson Prize, the Dantzig Prize, and the John von Neumann Theory Prize. His areas of mathematical research include optimization, discrete mathematics, and operations research. He has contributed to application areas such as production planning, logistics, public transportation, and telecommunication.