Gottfried Mayer-Kress received his Diploma in Theoretical High Energy Physics (``Stress-Energy-Tensor and Field Algebra in Two-Dimensional Conformally Invariant Quantum Field Theories") from the University of Hamburg, Germany in 1978 and his Dr. rer. nat. ("On the Persistence of Chaos and Order in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems") from the Institute of Theoretical Physics and Synergetics, University of Stuttgart, Germany in 1984. From 1984 to 1987 he was director's postdoc at the Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM. From 1987 to 1988 he held research appointments at the Laboratory for Biological Dynamics and Theoretical Medicine, University of California at San Diego and at the Crump Institute for Medical Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles. From 1988 to 1991 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Mathematics Department of the University of California at Santa Cruz. From 1992 to 1995 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for Complex Systems Research and Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Since 1995 he is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Kinesiology at Penn State University. He also held research appointments at the Department of Chemical Engineering of Princeton University, at the Observatoire de Nice, France, the Santa Fe Institute, the Universities of Potsdam and Tuebingen in Germany. His research interests cover many areas of nonlinear dynamics and complex systems as well as their applications.
He has been consulting with a number of government and private organizations including the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon and the Ground Intelligence Center of the US Army. In K-12 education he worked for several years as science mentor for the experimental Ross school and Institute and currently spends part of his time as substitute teacher at the Taipei American School in Taiwan.