Dr. rer. nat. Rüdiger Mutz holds degrees in psychology and economy. Mr. Mutz was senior researcher at the Professorship for Social Psychology and Research on Higher Education at ETH Zurich until July 2020. Since August 2020, he has been a senior researcher at the Competence Center for Higher Education and Science Studies (CHESS) at the UZH and works as a mandatary for Prof. em. Dr. Daniel.

Since 1990, Rüdiger Mutz has worked in the field of biostatistics as a scientific assistant at the Institute for Forest Use and Forest Utilisation at the University of Freiburg, Germany (Prof. Dr. Grammel, Prof. Dr. Lewark, Prof. Dr. Becker). He received his doctorate in 1998 at the former Faculty of Forest Sciences of the University of Freiburg (Germany) with the topic "Inhomogeneity of raw and material wood - conceptual, methodological-statistical and empirical implications for wood science research" (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Lewark, Prof. Dr. Pelz). Parallel to his dissertation, Rüdiger Mutz led an evaluation project on the acceptance of the reformed course of studies "Forest Sciences" by lecturers and students of the University of Freiburg (Germany). In the year 2002 he was awarded the prize of the "Environmental Psychology" section of the German Society of Psychology (DGPs) for his work on the analysis of spatial attitudinal patterns in the context of the project "Motives and Structures of Private Forest Owners in North Rhine-Westphalia". Since January 2003, he has been at the ETH Zurich. He teaches Social Psychology. Between 2006 and 2009, Rüdiger Mutz also worked at the former Didactics Centre of ETH Zurich (now: Educational Development and Technology). His research focuses on research evaluation on the base of peer review procedures and bibliometrics, methodological-statistical questions of research on higher education (e.g. bias-corrected ranking procedures, interrater reliability) and meta-analyses. Since 2010, Mr. Mutz has done research on various topics of grant peer review using the example of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), which provided him with extensive data sets on the peer review procedure for his research. The FWF will continue its cooperation in 2019. In addition to a series of meta-analyses on peer review (e.g. gender bias, reliability), the further development of statistical instruments is at the forefront, such as nowadays the application of psychometric models to questions of competence measurement using bibliometric data or the development of statistical models for research efficiency measurement. Rüdiger Mutz is member of the “European Association of Methodology” (EAM), the section “Methods and Evaluation” of the German Society of Psychology (DGPs) and the "Competence Center for Higher Education and Science Studies" (CHESS) of the University of Zurich.