After studying physics at the University of Tübingen and receiving his doctorate in nuclear physics in 1992, Rudolf Neu worked as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching. In 2011 he was appointed adjunct professor at the University of Tübingen. After spending a year (2011/2012) as task force leader at the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, UK, he returned to Germany to became head of the ITER Physics Department at EFDA, the European Fusion Development Agreement (2012/2013). Since 2014, within the framework of a dual appointment, he has been a professor at TUM and head of an independent research group at IPP.  His field of research is plasma material interaction and its effect on high temperature plasmas. The main emphasis of his current work is on the study of materials and components for the first walls of fusion reactors.