After six years working as PostDoc and head of a junior research group at the Institut für Angewandte Photophysik (IAPP) of the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, I joined the Oxford's Department of Physics as University Lecturer in the Condensed Matter Physics Subdepartment in May 2013. Furthermore, I am a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College. My research interests are renewable energies and energy policy in general and organic photovoltaics (PV) in particular (although there are admittedly sunnier places than the UK...). My further interests include open science, support of early stage researchers as well as the special responsibility of researchers towards society and how to best tackle global challenges.
From 2014 to 2019, I was member of the Global Young Academy, an international academy of 200 early to mid career researchers from all disciplines who share the passion for research for the benefit for society. These five years, which included three years serving on the elected Executive Committee, one of which as Co-Chair, were intense, but more than worthwhile and rewarding, and a unique opportunity for being active at the interface between research and society with an amazing group of like-minded people. In December 2023, I was elected Fellow of the International Science Council.
In January 2020, Grey Christoforo, James Ball, Henry Snaith and I co-founded Ark Metrica in the UK, solving problems one measurement at a time via an open science hardware startup! More recently, Dr Pascal Kaienburg and I co-founded TerraChange Solar, a venture in the space of organic PV and 2024 graduate of Oxford's Climate Stream in the Creative Destruction Lab.