Professor Burkhard Hess became founding and executive director of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law in September 2012. He studied law at the Universities of Würzburg, Lausanne and Munich. After being granted Venia Legendi in civil law, civil procedure, private international law, European law and public international law in 1996, he held chairs at the Universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg. He was a guest professor of Renmin University, University of Paris I, University of Georgetown and a scholar-in-residence at the Center for Transnational Law at the New York University. He served as a part-time judge at the Court of Appeal of Karlsruhe. Professor Hess often acts as an expert and advisor to the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and national governments. He has evaluated the European Insolvency Regulation and the Brussels I Regulation. He has also contributed to the drafting of the proposal for the Regulation on the European Attachment of Bank Accounts. He is the author of various books on German and European civil procedural law. He is Chairman of the ILA Committee on the Protection of Privacy in Private International and Procedural Law and Vice-President Europe of the International Association of Procedural Law. In March 2015, the University of Ghent awarded Professor Hess a doctor honoris causa; in May 2016, the University of Thessaloniki.