Jürgen Rödel is a professor for ceramics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany.

He received a diploma in Materials Science from University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in 1983 and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1988 as well as a habilitation in Materials Engineering from Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH) in 1992. During 1989-90 he did a first postdoc at National Institute of Standards and Technology and from 1991-1993 a second postdoc at TUHH. Since 1994 he holds his current position at TU Darmstadt. He is also a honorary professor at USTB and currently a distinguished visiting professor at Tsinghua University (both Beijing) as well as specially appointed professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. Recently he served his University as the vice-president for research for three years. Rödel is the author or coauthor of 300 refereed publications.

Over the years his research covered sintering, mechanical properties, electrical reliability and lead-free piezoceramics. In Germany he received the highest awards by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for young (Heintz-Maier-Leibnitz prize) and for senior (Leibniz-Prize) scientists and is member of the National Academy of Science and Technology. He also received the IEEE ferroelectrics recognition award.

Rödel is a member of the Basics science and the electronics division of the American Ceramic Society. He is a former chair of the publications committee and the Jeppson award committee. From the society he received the prize for best Ph.D., the loyalty award and was elevated to fellow.
Currently I wonder how we can eliminate toxic elements out of ceramics without killing the whole field. I am also curious about opportunities of tuning functional properties of ceramics by applied stress or by introducing dislocation networks.