He received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 1997 awarded for his contributions to theoretical computer science.
His principal interests lie in describing and modeling parallel and distributed programs and systems, the design and analysis of efficient parallel algorithms and programming paradigms, the design of algorithm solutions for scheduling and load balancing problems and investigation of their complexity theory.
[2] After studying mathematics at Technical University of Munich with a scholarship from the Maximilianeum foundation[3] and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mayr did his doctorate at Technical University of Munich in 1980.
In 1982, he became assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, where he also participated in the Presidential Young Investigator Program.
Mayr has held the Chair of Efficient Algorithms at Technical University of Munich since 1993 where he also served as the dean of his faculty from 2000 to 2003.