On 15 October 2014 he became vice-president for young researchers and diversity management at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Since 2015 he is member of the Expert Commission on Research and Innovation of the German Government.
He received his PhD in 1990 from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with the thesis "Product and Process Innovation in International Trade".
In 1996 he habilitated at the University of Augsburg on the topic "Heterogeneity and Spillovers - Basic Elements of a Theory of Technological Change".
Uwe Cantner is the director of The Jena Graduate School Human Behaviour in Social and Economic Change,[4] and the spokesman of the (formerly DFG) Graduate College “The Economics of Innovative Change,[5] offered jointly by Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics Jena in Germany.