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Joachim P. Spatz joined the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in 2016 as Director. From 2004-2015 he was Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (former MPI for Metals Research). From this time on he is also a Full Professor at the University of Heidelberg and head of the Dept. of Biophysical Chemistry. He was an Associated Professor for Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg from 2000-2004. From 1999-2000 he received his habilitation in Physics at the University of Ulm. He was a PostDoc in the group of Professor Jacques Prost and Albrecht Ott at the Institut Curie, Paris, in 1997 - 1998. He received his Diploma in Physics (1994) and his Ph.D. in Physics (1996) from the University of Ulm under the supervision of Prof. Möller (founding Director of the Leibniz Institute of Interactive Materials in Aachen). He is member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Among other awards, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Science Foundation in 2017.

short bio

Norbert Koch studied technical physics at the Technische Universität Graz, Austria. At the same university he received a doctorate in solid state physics in 2000. He spent the following two years as postdoc at Princeton University and worked on organic/metal interfaces and covalently surface-bound self-assembled monolayers. After moving to Berlin in 2003, he started building his own group, and unraveled a comprehensive understanding of interfaces of organic semiconductors with inorganic materials, and developed methods to optimize interface electronic properties. In 2009 he was appointed as professor in the Department of Physics of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and in 2010 his group at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie was established. At present, doping of organic semiconductors, as well as interfacial phenomena with perovskites and 2D materials are part of his research agenda.