Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Prof. E.h. mult. Dr. h.c. mult. Hans-Jörg Bullinger, born in 1944, studied mechanical engineering (specializing in production engineering) and received his Ph.D. at the University of Stuttgart. In 1975, a year after his doctorate, he became head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (Fraunhofer IPA) in Stuttgart. After his habilitation, he was appointed Professor of Industrial Science/Human Engineering at the University of Hagen. In 1982, he was became Chair of Industrial Science and Technology Management at the University of Stuttgart. Hans-Jörg Bullinger was director of the Fraunhofer IAO from 1981 to 2002 and President of the Fraunhofer Society (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft) from 2002 to 2012. Since 2013, he is member of the Fraunhofer Senate.
The Otto Kienzle commemorative medal awarded by the German university association of production engineers (Hochschulgruppe Fertigungstechnik), the VDI gold award as well as the Arthur-Burkhardt-Prize are among Hans-Jörg Bullingers’s numerous national and international awards. Moreover, he received the Medal for Merit of Baden-Württemberg, the Grashof commemorative medal of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), the Leonardo European Corporate Learning Award in the category Thought Leadership as well as the Hans Peter Stihl prize. In 2009, he was selected Manager of the Year by the Manager Magazin.
Hans-Jörg Bullinger received honorary doctorates at the University Novi Sad (Serbia-Montenegro) and the Polytechnic University Temeswar (Romania) as well as the honorary professor at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei (China). He was honored with the Order of the Federal Republic of Germany, medal and ribbon for outstanding services to German science, industry and society (1998); the First Class Order of the Federal Republic of Germany (2003) for extraordinary services to German science and research; and the Order of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for promoting the transfer of knowledge between science and industry (2006). In 2012, he received the Knight Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.