Prof. Ralf Schelenz studied mechanical engineering at the Rheinisch Westfälische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH Aachen) from 1984 to 1989, specializing in design engineering. He then worked for five years as a research assistant at the Institute for Machine Elements and Machine Design and received his doctorate in 1994. Since 1995, he and his working group have been working on research and industrial projects on the complex dynamic behavior of electro-mechanical drive systems with a particular focus on rail vehicles and wind turbines. He was one of the first to introduce multi-body simulation to investigate drive train dynamics. Since 2013, he has been managing director of the RWTH Aachen I³ Center for Wind Power Drives (CWD). He gives lectures on wind energy and machine acoustics, with a special focus on the electro-mechanical drive train. He is a member of the program committee of the biennial “Conference for Wind Power Drives”.