Prof. Dr. Manfred Wilhelm

KARLSRUHE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, GERMANY

BIOGRAPHY

Manfred Wihelm was born in 1966 and grew up on a winefarm in Maikammer/Pfalz. He studied Chemistry at the University of Mainz supported with a stipend of the Friedrich-Ebert-society and graduated in1992. He completed his Ph.D. in 1995 in the group of Prof. H.W. Spiess at the MPI for Polymer Research in Mainz. He also received his habilitation in 2004 in the group of Prof. H.W. Spiess. The habilitation is the German equivalent of an assistant professorship. The topic of the habilitation was the development and application of non-linear mechanical methods for the characterization of materials. This work was rewarded by the Reimund-Stadler prize of the Fachgruppe Makromolekulare Chemie (GDCh) in 1999. He received the title of Professor in 2004 at Technical University Darmstadt in joint cooperation with Max-Planck-Institut for Polymer Research. He was the Head of a Max-Planck research group “Mechanics of Polymers” in the engineering mechanics department.

He has been working at Karlsruhe Technology Institute (KIT), Institute for chemical technology and polymer chemistry (ITCP) since 2006. He had been the Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and Life Sciences at Karlsruhe Technology Institute (2019-2021). He is a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz and he continues to serve as director of the ITCP at KIT with the 1st of October 2023.

His research interests focus on method development (non-linear methods for material characterization), rheology, especially FT-Rheology, combinations of Rheology with molecular spectroscopy, chemical detectors for SEC, and solid-State-NMR. He has more than 300 articles in journals indexed in international databases. His group consists of 8 Post. Doc scientist, 12 Ph.D. students, 3 master students. He has given speeches and presentations in many national and international conferences, scientific and informative meetings.