Volker Ziemann obtained his PhD in accelerator physics from Dortmund University in 1990. After post-doctoral positions in Stanford at SLAC and in Geneva at CERN, where he worked on the design of the LHC, in 1995 he moved to Uppsala where he worked at the electron-cooler storage ring CELSIUS. In 2005 he moved to the physics department where he has since taught physics. He was responsible for several accelerator physics projects at CERN, DESY and XFEL. In 2014 he received the Thuréus prize from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala.