Born in Munich, Germany, Petra Rudolf studied Physics at the La Sapienza University of Rome. In 1987, she joined the TASC INFM laboratory in Trieste for the next five years, interrupted by extended periods in 1989 and 1990/1991 at Bell Labs, USA, where she worked on the newly discovered fullerenes. In 1993, she moved to the University of Namur, where she received her PhD in 1995 and then quickly progressed from postdoctoral researcher to lecturer and senior lecturer before taking up the Chair in Experimental Solid State Physics at the University in Groningen in 2003. Her principal research interests are molecular motors, 2D solids, organic thin films and inorganic/organic hybrids. She has published >300 peer-reviewed articles and 39 book chapters. Dr Rudolf guided 40 MSc and 33 PhD students to the successful defence of their theses. Dr Rudolf served as President of the European Physical Society in 2019/21 and of the Belgian Physical Society in 2000/01. She was elected member of the Academia Europaea, the German Academy of Science and Engineering, the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna, honorary member of the Italian Physical Society, Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the American Physical Society and Lid van verdienste of the Dutch Physical Society. For her work on molecular motors, she received the 2007 Descartes Prize of the European Commission. In 2013, H.M. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands appointed her Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau.