Prof. Dr. Thomas Klinger is Director of the Experimental Plasma Physics Division (E5) and Scientific Director of the Wendelstein 7-X project at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), where he also serves on the Board of Directors. He studied physics at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel and completed his PhD in 1994, followed by research stays in Stockholm, Marseille, and Garching. After serving as a Research Associate in Kiel and later as Associate Professor at the University of Greifswald, where he also headed the Institute of Physics, he became a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society in 2001 and has held senior leadership roles at IPP since.

His scientific work focuses on experimental nonlinear plasma dynamics, including pressure-driven instabilities such as drift waves, kinetic Alfvén waves, wave–particle interaction, and plasma turbulence, as well as turbulent transport and instability control. At Wendelstein 7-X, his research covers MHD equilibrium, stability, impurity transport, microscopic turbulence, and plasma transport. He has authored around 170 publications with over 4,500 citations.