Since 2025, Professor Dr Bettina Rockenbach has served as the President of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the National Academy of Sciences in Germany. An expert in the fields of Behavioural Economics and Game Theory, she holds a distinguished academic and professional career spanning multiple institutions worldwide.

Currently, she is a Full Professor of Experimental and Behavioural Economics at the University of Cologne, a position she has held since 2011. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany, since 2019. In addition, Professor Rockenbach has been the Director of the Reinhard Selten Institute, a collaborative effort between the University of Bonn and the University of Cologne, since 2018.

Professor Rockenbach’s prior academic appointments include a Full Professorship in Microeconomics at the University of Erfurt from 2000 to 2011, and a Visiting Professorship at the University of California San Diego in 2012. She has also held visiting positions at the CentER for Economic Research at the University of Tilburg, Netherlands (1999), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1992 and 1993.

She completed her habilitation in Economics at the University of Bonn in 1999 and was awarded the venia legendi. Prior to this, she earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn in 1993, under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Professor Dr Reinhard Selten, with whom she also worked as a Research Assistant at the university’s Bonn Laboratory for Experimental Economics from 1988 to 1999.

Professor Rockenbach holds a diploma in Mathematics (with minors in Economics and Computer Sciences) from the University of Bonn, where she began her academic career.

Her research focuses on the intersection of Behavioural Economics and Game Theory, exploring decision-making processes and their implications in economic contexts.