Christopher Barner-Kowollik


Christopher Barner-Kowollik is a German–Australian materials scientist who is a former Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow working in macromolecular photochemistry. He is currently an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor and Institute at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President of the Queensland University of Technology. He holds a fractional appointment as Distinguished Professor within the School of Chemistry and Physics at the QUT in Brisbane. From 2017 to 2024 he was editor-in-chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) journal Polymer Chemistry, and is an editor for the RSC's journal Chemical Science. He is a principal investigator within the Soft Matter Materials Laboratory at QUT.

Education and career

After his undergraduate studies of chemistry at the Universities of Constance and Goettingen, Christopher Barner-Kowollik earned his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Goettingen in 1999. Following postdoctoral research with Tom Davis at the University of New South Wales, he held academic positions at the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design, and was appointed Full Professor of Polymer Chemistry in 2006 at the same institution. In 2008, he moved back to Germany, where he became the Chair of Macromolecular Chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. There he was the founding director of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1176 'Molecular Structuring of Soft Matter' established by the German Research Council. He is a founding PI and thrust speaker in the DFG Excellence Cluster 3D Matter Made to Order.
Barner-Kowollik relocated in 2017 to the Queensland University of Technology, where he was awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship and appointed Director of QUT's Soft Matter Materials Laboratory. He was an associate group leader at the KIT's Institute of Nanotechnology and the Institute of Polymer Chemistry and Chemical Technology, after heading a full research group at the KIT until 2020. In December 2019 Barner-Kowollik was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Vice-President of QUT, from September 2022 to January 2025 he additionally held the role of Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor and Vice-President. He is currently an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor and Institute Director at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Research

Barner-Kowollik's research was initially in the field of polymer chemistry and polymer reaction kinetics. Over the course of his career, his research has fused polymer chemistry with organic and photochemistry. These research areas include the development of wavelength-orthogonal, -synergistic, -cooperative and -antagonistic reactions, and their photophysical understanding. His research established the field of highly wavelength-resolved photochemical action plots for photochemical covalent bond formation and cleavage. The development of photochemical action plots demonstrated that molecular absorptivity and photochemical reactivity are oftentimes disparate, which has significant implications for the photochemical synthesis of highly defined macromolecular architectures. The developed photochemical platforms – including out-of-equilibrium light stabilized dynamic materials - find application for the design of 2D and 3D photolithographic processes as well as in biosystems including single cell scaffolds. Examples of precision photochemistry from his laboratory range from synergistically operating covalent bond forming systems and photoresins requiring two colours of light to cure and examples of pathway independent wavelength orthogonal reaction systems to using different colours of light to selectively adapt soft matter material properties. Christopher Barner-Kowollik has published over 800 peer-reviewed research papers, which have been cited close to 53,300 times.

Awards and recognition

Elected fellowships