Jorg Zegenhagen was born in Otterndorf, Germany, a small town close to the North Sea. His scientific work is dedicated to investigating the atomic structure and electronic properties of surfaces, interfaces, and thin films. He studied physics in Hamburg, where he received his Diploma in 1980 and his PhD in 1984. He conducted his PhD work at the Hamburg Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at the international German research center DESY. Afterwards he spent two years as postdoc at State University of New York at Albany and three years as member of technical staff at AT&T Bell laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, performing a good part of his experimental work at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory. For ten years he led a group at the Max-Planck-Institute for solid state research in Stuttgart, Germany, working on diverse issues such as investigating the structure of surfaces adsorbates, solid/electrolyte interfaces, isotopic pure thin films, and the structure and electronic properties of epitaxial high temperature superconductors. He has been lecturing at the Ecole des Mines in St. Etienne, France, since 1990 and at the University of Dortmund, Germany, where he received his habilitation in 1993. Since the end of 1999 he is in charge of an international team operating an insertion device beamlines and associated laboratories at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France. He strongly favors international collaboration, established and enforced by extended visits to the US, Japan and other parts of the world. He is a member of the APS since 1984, member of the Material Research Society and the German Physical Society and was organizer, chair, or committee member of numerous international conferences and workshops.