After studying computer science at the University of Bonn and scientific qualification positions at the Technical University of Munich, the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Karlsruhe, Jörg Desel held a chair for applied computer science at the Catholic University of Eichstätt from 1998 to 2010. Since 2010 he has headed the software engineering and programming theory department at the FernUniversität in Hagen. In addition to leading positions in the specialist groups Petri nets, EMISA, and the cross-sectional specialist committee for modeling of the GI, he was a spokesman for the department for computer science in education/didactics of computer science for seven years. He was the founding spokesman for the specialist groups e-learning (today educational technologies) and vocational training in computer science.