Professor Werner Ebeling studied physics at the University of Rostock and the Moscow State University. He got his PhD and habilitation at the Rostock University. Since 1979 he is professor of theoretical physics at the Humboldt University Berlin. In 2001 he took retirement from university teaching at Humboldt to concentrate on research in particular in the Collaborative Research Center "Nonlinear Complex Processes" in Berlin. Further he is still active as guest and honorary professor of several Russian universities. Dr Ebeling is associate editor of journals such as e.g. BioSystems, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Contributions to Plasma Physics and member of several editorial boards. He is the author of more than two hundred research papers and a dozen monographs in the field of statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics and theory of selforganization.