Conference speaker

Talk: Supramolecular approaches to detect and heal defects in polymeric materials

Christoph (Chris) Weder is Professor of Polymer Chemistry and Materials at the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His main research interests are the design, synthesis, investigation, and application of functional polymers, notably stimuli-responsive and bio-inspired materials.

Weder was trained in chemistry and materials science at ETH Zurich, where he earned a doctoral degree in 1994. After a postdoctoral research at MIT he returned to ETH for a Habilitation. In 2001, he joined Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (USA) as Professor of Macromolecular Science and Engineering. In 2009 he moved to the newly established Adolphe Merkle Institute, which he directed from 2010-2022. From 2014-2020 Weder also served as founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research Bio-Inspired Materials. He has co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed papers that have been cited over 30’000 times. He is co-inventor of about 20 patent families, helped to develop several commercialized technologies, and co-founded a spin-off company. He is an associate editor of ACS Macro Letters, a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, and a fellow of the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry. Weder has advised about 80 graduate students, 45 postdocs, and 50 undergraduate researchers.