Fabian Meder

Fabian Meder graduated in 2008 in Bio-and Nanotechnology from South Westphalia University of Applied Science, Germany and obtained a PhD in Material Science with highest honors from University of Bremen, Germany in 2013 on the interactions between functionalized materials and biological matter. Before joining IIT in 2017, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany (2016-2017), at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany (2016, 6 months), and the Centre for BioNano Interactions at University College Dublin, Ireland (2013-2016), and he worked as a graduate student researcher at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, EMPA, Switzerland (2007-2008). During his career, he has been working between engineering, material science, and biology in 7 institutes in 4 countries and developed unique interdisciplinary skills and techniques for analyzing and utilizing living, biological and artificial matter. He collaborated with 14 research groups from 11 institutions and 8 different countries (104 co-authors) and supervised PhD, Master, Bachelor and internship students from 6 countries. In 2021, he was awarded the title Rising Star from the Rising Star Academy of the University of Freiburg, Germany. His research interest lies in the edge between materials science and biology and the processes occurring at biological and material surfaces at all scales. His recent work at IIT focuses on novel energy sources based on electrical phenomena in living plants and on new functional materials for soft robotics. In 2023, he won an ERC Consolidator grant for his project EpiC in which he will analyse and exploit spontaneous charge formation on biological surfaces.