Director

Professor Ralf B. Wehrspohn was appointed jointly by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft to work in Halle. As the youngest institute director in the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, he has headed the Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS since 2006. He holds the chair of Microstructure-Based Material Design at the Martin Luther University in Halle.

Ralf B. Wehrspohn studied physics at the University of Oldenburg and at the age of 26 received his doctorate from the École Polytechnique in France. At 32 he became a professor of the University of Paderborn. During the period between he worked in industry at Philips Research in London and habilitated (received his post doctoral qualification) at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle.

Ralf B. Wehrspohn’s main areas of work are nanostructure materials and components, such as those used in microelectronics, sensors, photonics and in photovoltaics.

He has received several awards for his work: Ralf B. Wehrspohn is a Heinz Maier-Leibniz Prize winner of the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DfG), a winner of the DOW Chemical science award and Innovation prize winner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT (TR100).

In 2004, the Financial Times Deutschland considered him to be one of the 101 most innovative minds in Germany.

Professor Matthias Petzold studied physics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Halle (Saale) and received his doctorate in 1987. Following his work at the university and two years of working in the ceramics industry, in 1991 he switched to the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Mechanics which was being set up in Halle and was the predecessor institute of the Fraunhofer IMWS.

Since its foundation in 1992 as a field office, through his diverse activities in material research and diagnostics of microelectronics components, the strength and reliability of silicon microsystems and the study of reaction mechanisms of dental products, he made a significant contribution to the setting up and the successful scientific and economic development of the  Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS.

In 2003, Matthias Petzold was appointed Deputy Director of the Institute. He also heads the »Components of Microelectronics and Microsystem Engineering« business unit and in 2007 was appointed Honorary Professor of Microsystem Engineering of the Merseburg University of Applied Sciences. Matthias Petzold is the author and co-author of more than 100 publications in magazines and conference proceedings and has given various talks as a guest of international conferences. He also works as a reviewer for various international trade magazines.