Young Talents in Polymer Science

[Alexander Böker] [Dr.] is Director of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Applied Polymer Research (IAP) and holds the Chair for Polymer Materials and Polymer Technology at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He studied chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, and Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He received his PhD from Bayreuth University in 2002 working with Prof. G. Krausch and Prof. Axel H.E. Müller. From 2002-2004, he was a postdoctoral fellow with Thomas P. Russell at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2006, he received a Lichtenberg-Professorship funded by the VolkswagenStiftung and in 2015 the ERC Consolidator Grant. Alexander Böker has published more than 130 papers in peer-reviewed journals. The main research interests of his group include guided self-assembly of block copolymer systems, hierarchical (bio)nanoparticle assemblies and the control of self-assembly processes via external fields.

[Frank Wiesbrock] [Dr.] received his doctorate at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 2003 for his work on metal ß-amino carboxylates under the supervision of H. Schmidbaur. His subsequent biannual postdoctoral stay with U.S. Schubert at the Eindhoven Technical University focused on block copoly(2-oxazoline)s from microwave-assisted synthesis. He worked as a project manager at Chemspeed Technologies AG in Augst, Switzerland, and returned to academia in 2007 as a Marie Curie ToK researcher with T. Calogeropoulou at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens, Greece. Since 2008, he has been an assistant professor/lecturer at the Graz University of Technology, Austria, where he completed his Habilitation in 2012. Currently he is employed as a senior researcher at the Polymer Competence Center Leoben (PCCL), Austria. His research interests comprise microwave-assisted polymerizations, poly(2-oxazoline)s, biopolymers and biocompatible polymers, and nanocomposites for electronic applications.