2012 Hans and Marlies Zimmer International Scholar
Hans G. Börner received his Ph.D. degree in macromolecular science in 2000 at the Phillips- University Marburg (Germany) in the field of anionic polymerization of functional monomers (supervised by Walter Heitz). He held a postdoctoral position with Krzysztof Matyjaszewski at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh (USA), where he synthesized molecular bottle brushes with complex side-chain architectures using controlled radical polymerization techniques. Afterwards he headed an Emmy-Noether research group at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (Potsdam, Germany) in the colloid chemistry department of Markus Antonietti, where he received his habilitation. His research interests were focused on polymerpeptide conjugates and monodisperse, sequence-defined polymers to establish and control well-defined secondary interactions in macromolecular systems. Since 2009 he is leading the Laboratory of Organic Synthesis of Functional Systems at the Humboldt-University zu Berlin in Germany. His current research interests are devoted to the precise synthesis of functional polymers; the biomimetic regulation of polymer functions and the exploitation of specific interactions in synthetic polymers. He was awarded in 2003 with the Emmy-Noether-Stipend of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and received in 2007 the Dr. Hermann Schnell (GDCh) award for the best young German scientist in the field of macromolecular science. He was honored in 2006 with the membership in the Max-Bergmann Society and joined in 2009 the International Advisory Board of Macromolecular Rapid Communications and Macromolecular Bioscience of Wiley VCH.