We are a research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and at the University of Heidelberg in
Germany that uses organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, cell biology and microbiology approaches to develop
innovative research tools and to answer important biological questions.

The goal of our research is to gain better understanding of biological interfaces and to advance our ability to
effectively control and direct behavior of cells and bacteria. We are working on the development of biologically active
functional polymer surfaces and materials, "smart" switchable polymer surfaces, and gradient surfaces that we use for
fundamental investigation of biological interfaces, for studying cell- and bacteria-surface interactions and for studying
biofouling. The motivation behind our research is: to learn how cells and bacteria interact with surfaces; to develop
biocompatible, biomimetic and "smart" materials that can improve performance of existing biomedical or cell culture
devices; and to use this knowledge and materials to achieve control over behavior of cells and bacteria on surfaces.
Our research is very interdisciplinary and we closely collaborate with biologists and physicists.

30.05.2011: Results of Florian’s and Erica’s work are accepted to Angewandte Chemie

20.05.2011: Results of David’s work are published in Advanced Materials [Link]

01.04.2011: Barbara Kwiatkowska joined the group as a master student.

29.12.2010: EU patent application based on Florian´s results is submitted with the
help of the KIT and the Müller-Boré & Partner law firm [Link]

09.12.2010: Results of Florian´s research work lead to receiving the Helmholtz-
Enterprise grant for opening a start-up company. More information
can be found at the Helmholtz Association website [Link] or at
the KIT website [Link]

01.12.2010: Victoria Nedashkivska joined the group

01.11.2010: Erica Ueda joined the group

01.09.2010: Junsheng Li joined the group

01.08.2010: Alexander Efremov has joined the group

01.06.2010: Linxian Li joined the group

01.01.2010: Die Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft fördert fünf neue Nachwuchsgruppen
am KIT. Damit können fünf herausragende junge
Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler in Karlsruhe ihre eigenen
Forschungsgruppen aufbauen und leiten. [Link]

Jede Nachwuchsgruppenleitungsstelle ist mit einem Jahresbudget von
mindestens 250.000 Euro über fünf Jahre ausgestattet. [Link]