About our chair
Stefan Guldin, PhD, CEng, FHEA, FInstP, FRSC, has been Professor (Chair) of Complex Soft Matter at TUM since 2024. He is currently seconded to TUMCREATE, where he serves as Scientific Co-Director and Resident PI of the Proteins4Singapore project. Stefan studied Physics with a focus on Soft Condensed Matter at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and TUM. He earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2012, working on hybrid material architectures via organic self-assembly. He then moved to EPFL as a postdoctoral researcher, extending this work to systems involving liquid crystal interfaces. In 2015, he began his independent research career at University College London (UCL) as a Principal Investigator, later becoming Associate Professor (2018–2022) and Chair of Adaptive & Responsive Nanomaterials (2022–2024). Since 2024, he holds an honorary professorship at UCL.
Stefan’s research focuses on nanoscale material formation through molecular self-assembly, the development of adaptive and responsive material architectures, and their applications in the life sciences. He has co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed articles, one book, several book chapters, and holds four patents/patent applications. His scientific contributions have been recognised with awards from the Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Physics, German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), Springer Publishing, the European Materials Research Society and the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). He is co-founder of the biomed start-up Vesynta, which is devoted to the development of companion drug monitoring solutions for personalised medicine. His educational platform qTLC.app, which enables to conduct analytical chemistry with a smartphone, is used across 47 countries on 6 continents and received the UCL Education Award 2020.