Heinz Pitsch received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from RWTH Aachen University in 1998. He held post-doctoral positions at UC San Diego and Stanford University and joined the faculty of Stanford University in 2003. In 2010, he returned to RWTH Aachen University to assume his present position as Head of the Institute for Combustion Technology. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Combustion Institute and a recipient of two ERC Advanced Grant awards (2016, 2022), the International Award of the Japanese Combustion Society (2019), the Chaire Andre Jaumotte of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences (2020), the AIAA Air Breathing Propulsion award (2020), and the Zeldovich Gold medal of the Combustion Institute (2024). He actively participates in training programs for young academics, such as the Princeton Combustion Summer School and the Princeton-Tsinghua Combustion Summer School.

He is also the vice chair of the NHR4CES Resource Allocation Board and a member of the NHR Nutzungsausschuss.