Dr. Klaus Gründler has been head of the Macroeconomics department since April 1. He is also a research professor at the ifo Institute in Munich and a member of the CESifo research network. Before taking up his professorship in Kassel, he was Deputy Head of the Center for Public Finance and Political Economy at the ifo Institute in Munich and was active in research and teaching at LMU Munich. In the winter semester 2022 / 2023, he was a substitute professor at the University of Konstanz. He received his doctorate from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in 2017. His research interests lie in analyzing the causes and effects of growth and inequality, particularly with regard to the role of economic policy measures and the importance of individual expectations. At the University of Kassel, he would like to devote more time to the question of how welfare differences between nations can be explained and influenced.