Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are attracting growing interest as inexpensive, bio-based reinforcing filler in polymer nanocomposites, but they are also useful to create advanced functional materials.

Examples include bio-inspired nanocomposites with mechanically adaptive behavior, high-surface-area sensor systems, nanocrystal-based pro-fragrances, and tissue-engineering substrates.

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Bio

Since 2009 Christoph Weder is Professor for Polymer Chemistry and Materials at the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg. He also serves as the Director of this center for fundamental and applied research on soft nanomaterials and is also the Director of the new National Center of Competence in Research Bio-Inspired Materials.

Chris was educated at ETH Zürich, where he earned degrees in Chemistry and Education and a PhD in Materials Science. After a postdoctoral stay at MIT (Cambridge, USA), and completing a Habilitation at ETH, he served for nine years as Professor in the Department for Polymer Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland USA). His main research interests are the design, synthesis, investigation of structure-property relationships, and exploitation of novel functional polymer systems, in particular stimuli-responsive polymers, biomimetic materials, and polymer nanocomposites. He has co-authored over 190 scientific papers and book chapters and is co-inventor of 16 patent families.

Awards: 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, the DuPont Young Professor Award, an NSF Special Creativity Award, and an ERC Advanced Grant