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Plasma physicist Thomas Klinger is dealing with the fundamental principles of a future power plant, which – like the Sun – will produce energy from the fusion of light atomic nuclei. Embedded in an international endeavor, this requires the design and construction of large research facilities such as ITER and Wendelstein 7-X to develop the knowledge base for the exploitation of a new clean and abundant primary energy source.

Thomas Klinger is head of the "Stellarator Dynamics and Transport" Division and since 2005 scientific director of the project "Wendelstein 7-X" as well as member of the Directorate of IPP.

The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) reactor is an experimental stellarator (nuclear fusion reactor) built in Greifswald, Germany, by the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP).

In April 2001, he was appointed as Scientific Member of the Max-Planck Society and Director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald.

After a research period in France he obtained his PhD in 1994 with a thesis on non-linear plasma dynamics. As a research assistant at the University of Kiel, Klinger was concerned with drift wave turbulence and nonlinear plasma structures. As visiting scientist he conducted research at the Alfvén Laboratory in Stockholm, the Centre de Physique Théorique and the Université Aix-Provence in Marseille and the Max-Planck-Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching. He obtained his habilitation in 1998 with a thesis on the control of plasma instabilities. Shortly thereafter he was appointed Professor of Experimental Physics at the Ernst-Moritz Arndt University, Greifswald, where he has headed the Institute of Physics as chair from 2000 till 2001.