Professor, Soft Matter Physics

Adolphe Merkle Institute Chemin des Verdiers 4 CH-1700 Fribourg Switzerland

Office:	B323
Email:	ullrich.steiner@unifr.ch
	0000-0001-5936-339X

Ullrich (Ulli) Steiner is Professor of Soft Matter Physics at the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) of the University of Fribourg, serves as AMI’s director, and also leads the Swiss National Center of Compe­ten­ce in Research Bio-Inspired Materials.

Ulli was educated at University of Konstanz (Germany) and the Weizmann Institute of Sceince (Israel). He held previous appointments as a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute, the Institute Charles Sadron (France), and as senior scientist at the University of Konstanz.  In 1999 he was appointed as Professor (chair) for Polymer Science at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and in 2004 as the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Physics of Materials at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambirdge (UK).

Ulli’s main research interests lie in the structure-function relationship of materials at the nanoscale.  His current research projects encompas energy materials for photovoltaics and batteries, and optical metamaterials, and the role of disorder in photonic structures.

Ulli has taught physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering students in Switzerland, the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and in Germany, and has mentored more than 85 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. He has co-authored more than 310 research papers and book chapters. 

Ulli is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and in the past held fellowships of the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and of St. Edmunds College Cambridge. He is the receipient of the 2002 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize for Physical Sciences, the 2014 Selby Traveling Fellowship by Australian Academy of Science, and the 2014 Macro Group UK Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2016 he was the Peabody visiting Professor at MIT (USA) and currently holds an ERC Advanced Grant.

Ulli's full CV is here.