Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Schmid is a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) to the German government and is Director of the Fraunhofer IWES - Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology in Kassel, which until the summer of 2009 was formerly known as ISET– Institute for Solar Energy Technology in Kassel/Hanau, of which he became Chairman of the Executive Board in 1998 and which is one of the worldwide leading research centres for energy systems technology. Prof. Schmid was the founding president of the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE).

Born in 1944, Prof. Schmid studied Aerospace Technology at the University of Stuttgart (1966 – 1972), received his doctorate in 1976 at the University of Karlsruhe in the field of engineering sciences, was project manager at the Nuclear Research Centre in Karlsruhe (1972 – 1979) and at Dornier (1979 – 1980) and Head of Department at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme (1981 - 1993) in Freiburg. In 1992 he became a Professor at the University of Karlsruhe until 1995 when he left to take on the Professorship at the University of Kassel and became a member of the ISET Executive Board of which he took over the position as Chairman in 1998.