[3][4] In 2016 Balling received Luxembourg's Ordre de Mérite (Commandeur) from Prime Minister Xavier Bettel.
Balling received a master's degree from Washington State in 1980 and a Diploma in Human Nutrition from the University of Bonn in 1981.
[6] Balling was a Postdoctoral Fellow from 1985 - 1987 with Janet Rossant at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada.
[7][8][9] From 1993 until 2000 he was Director of the Institute of Mammalian Genetics at the GSF-National Research Center for Environment and Health (GSF) in Munich, Germany (later renamed Helmholtz Zentrum München).
[7][12] The Munich ENU Mouse Mutagenesis Screen was an important part of the German Human Genome Project (DGHP), providing an approach to comparative phenotyping.
[16] From 2001 to 2009 Balling was Scientific Director of the Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung mbh (GBF, German Research Centre for Biotechnology), in Braunschweig, Germany.