Our Research Focus

Our group designs and develops responsive polymer (nano-)materials as versatile building blocks for biomedical, biotechnological, and technological applications. Inspired by nature’s ability to integrate function, morphology, and adaptability in complex systems, we aim to create synthetic materials that dynamically respond to their environment. These adaptive polymers serve as multifunctional platforms for applications such as targeted drug delivery, regenerative medicine, catalysis, photonics, and nanostructured coatings.

The Challenge: Lack of general and accurate design rules

Over the past decades, many innovative polymeric materials have been designed for a wide variety of applications. However, these advances remain largely isolated. Most approaches are application-driven and empirical, which means that materials are optimized case by case but rarely comparable. Fundamental design questions, such as how polymer chemistry, molecular architecture, colloidal features, or self-assembly affect functionality, often remain unresolved. Without systematic comparability, the field lacks broadly applicable design rules or predictive models for responsiveness and performance.

Our Vision: Developing predictive structure-property relations

We want to flip the script: Rather than perfecting one material at a time, we aim to establish systematic material platforms that allow us to uncover generalizable structure-property relations in adaptive polymeric (nano-)materials. By moving beyond isolated case studies to such modular and comparable material libraries, we seek to derive predictive rules that link molecular-level design to macroscopic performance. This approach will enable more efficient and rational design of next-generation functional polymers.

Our Approach: From molecules to materials

Our path is hierarchical and multidisciplinary where we combine chemistry, physics, and advanced characterization to enable a high degree of tunability, modularity, and creativity in our materials design:

• Molecular Level: we use precision synthesis to control polymer structure, chemistry, sequence, and architecture, thereby translating small changes into major functional properties.

• Mesoscale: we leverage self-assembly, colloidal chemistry, and interfacial dynamics to build complex, responsive (nano-)structures ranging from nanogels and colloids to nanopatterned surfaces and macroscopic hydrogels.

• Macroscopic Scale: We analyze how our design elements influence function in real-world settings: We establish quantitative structure-property relations that tie together small-scale design features with large-scale functionality in biological and physicochemical environments.

Outlook: Towards materials acceleration platforms

Our long-term goal is to accelerate materials discovery by integrating synthetic polymer platforms with automated synthesis, advanced characterization, and machine learning. By identifying transferable descriptors and generating reliable datasets, adaptive polymer nanomaterials will become both powerful functional systems and a foundation for data-driven materials science. In this way, our research contributes not only to improved biomedical and technological applications but also to the broader framework of materials acceleration platforms.