Joybrato Mukherjee is a German professor of English Linguistics and the president of the University of Cologne. When he took office in 2009, he was the youngest university president ever appointed in Germany. In June 2019, he was elected president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); he took office on 1 January 2020.

The University of Cologne is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in the year 1388, the sixth university to be established in Central Europe. It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with more than 50,000 students. The University of Cologne is a member of the German U15 association of major research-intensive universities and was a university of excellence as part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative from 2012 to 2019. It is constantly ranked among top 20 German universities in the world rankings.