Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWSAs Professor of Diagnostics and Structure of Materials at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Prof. Dr. Erica Lilleodden will take up her position on September 1, 2023. The materials scientist has already been Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS in Halle (Saale) since February 2022. In her new position, she would like to further strengthen the successful collaboration between the two research institutes and provide impetus for research into sustainable materials.
"I am very much looking forward to the new position, the exchange within the faculty and the academic life in Halle," says the 50-year-old scientist, who was appointed in a joint appointment procedure by the university and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. In her work, she focuses primarily on the nano- and micromechanics of materials such as metals, ceramics and composites. She has more than 70 contributions to peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and is a member of the review panel for renowned journals such as Science, Nature and Nature Materials. A native of the United States, she has been working in Germany since 2004. Her professional career after studying materials science at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities and earning her PhD at Stanford University includes positions at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL), the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Helmholtz Center hereon. From 2014 to February 2022, she was Professor of Experimental Nano- and Micromechanics at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg.
Lilleodden would like to set sustainable and multifunctional materials as the research focus for the professorship: "This is a topic at the interface between chemistry and physics that has great social significance and holds many exciting research questions with great application relevance." Within the framework of basic research at the university, topics could thus also be worked on that will be relevant to the needs of industrial clients at the Fraunhofer IMWS a few years later. In addition to the synergies between the two positions, Lilleodden, who has been teaching since 2002, also looks forward to working with students at the Faculty of Natural Sciences II - Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics: "For me, this should be an encounter at eye level, because this exchange with motivated and creative young people always brings new insights, perspectives and opportunities."