Tanja Weil

Tanja Weil is a German chemist known for her research for in macromolecular chemistry, dendrimers, dyes, protein, and peptides. As of 2025, Weil holds the position of director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research.

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Education

Weil conducted her undergraduate in chemistry at the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany from 1993 until 1998. She then moved to the University of Bordeaux I in France from 1993 to 1998. She did her Ph.D. under the mentorship of Klaus Müllen at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research from 1998 to 2002.

Career

From 2002–2008 Weil was the director of Chemical Research and Development at Merz Pharmaceuticals GmbH in Frankfurt. In 2008, she joined the National University of Singapore as an associate professor. She then worked at Ulm University from 2010 to 2016. In 2017 she moved to the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research where she heads the division of Synthesis of Macromolecules.

Research

Weil is known for her work on the synthesis and development of macromolecules with precise structural characteristics and versatile functionalities. The press has covered her research include her 2024 work that described a material that separates chemical compounds with similar sizes, but varying chemical properties, and her 2023 research that used fibers similar viruses to introduce DNA into cells.

Awards and honors

In 2002 she received the Otto Hahn Medal. In 2014 she gave the Bruno-Werdelmann lecture. Weil received the Netherlands Scholar Award for Supramolecular Chemistry in 2020. In 2023 Weil received the Karl Ziegler award.