Welcome Professor Thomas Hellweg, new SAB member with focus on Soft Matter
Thomas Hellweg would like help LINXS in identifying new research themes. An example would be a new focus on sustainable materials research or on materials related environmental problems like e.g. microplastics.
We are happy to welcome Thomas Hellweg, Professor of Physical and Biophysical Chemistry at Bielefeld University, as a new Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) member with focus on the area of Soft Matter. Thomas Hellweg was also one of LINXS very first guest researchers, and stayed at the Institute from June to August 2019. He will sit on the SAB until 2028.
Thomas is a physical chemist by training and has done his PhD-thesis in the domain of soft matter research at the frontier between colloid science, polymer science, and biophysics. His PhD supervisor was Prof. Thomas Dorfmüller and he obtained his PhD from Bielefeld University in 1995. Subsequently, Thomas Hellweg has spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal in Bordeaux. In 1998 he became researcher at TU Chemnitz in the physics department. In 2001 Thomas moved to TU Berlin were he finished the “habilitation” in physical chemistry. In 2007 he became professor for physical chemistry of colloids at Bayreuth University. Also in 2007 he received the offer of a position at the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL) as ILL fellow for soft matter, which he finally declined. In 2010 he became full professor for “Physical and Biophysical Chemistry” at Bielefeld University. Currently he is dean of the Faculty of Chemistry at Bielefeld University.
How would you like to contribute as SAB member?
I want to help LINXS in identifying new research themes. An example would be a new focus on sustainable materials research or on materials related environmental problems like e.g. microplastics.
What do you see as the value of LINXS?
LINXS joins researchers from different disciplines in a true interdisciplinary approach with scattering methods as a common element. This will create progress simply due to LINXS induced interchange between different viewpoints on science in biology, bioengineering, chemistry, and physics.
How would you like to see LINXS develop?
I hope that LINXS will further develop into a place for world wide knowledge exchange in the domain of scattering methods. New themes should be identified which are related to environmental and societal challenges. This could be themes like “ageing societies” or “nanoplastics toxicity”.
What are your main research interests?
At present the main research interests of the Hellweg group are smart microgels and smart microgel based materials (e.g. smart membranes for electrochemical applications), microemulsions confined in porous materials, polymer surfactant interactions, membrane biophysics with a focus of lipid bilayer interaction with saponins (saponins are plant based bio-surfactants with usually very strong pharmaceutical activity). The methods used by Hellweg group to study these complex systems are scattering methods (small angle X-ray and neutron scattering (SAXS and SANS); neutron spin-echo spectroscopy, light scattering) and high resolution microscopies.