Dr Meike Nicole Leiske will take over the newly established junior professorship for sustainable and functional polymers on 1 December 2022. She comes from Ghent University in Belgium, where she was a postdoc in a research group on supramolecular chemistry. Before that, she spent three years as a postdoc at Monash University in Melbourne, with which the University of Bayreuth is linked through numerous collaborations in the field of polymer research - in particular through the Bayreuth-Melbourne Colloid/Polymer Network, which was funded by the DAAD from 2015 to 2021. Leiske began her scientific career by studying biology and chemistry at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. After her bachelor's degree, she moved to the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena: here she first completed the master's programme "Chemical Biology" and then did her doctorate under Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schubert on a topic in polymer chemistry. Since then, she has become increasingly involved in polymer research.
In Bayreuth, Dr. Meike Nicole Leiske will link issues from polymer chemistry, molecular biosciences and ecology in an interdisciplinary way. It is a central concern for her to make plastics more environmentally friendly and to advance the development of biodegradable polymers that can be used as innovative packaging materials, for example. The interactions between polymers and living organisms will also be an important topic for the new junior professor: she wants to contribute to the avoidance of health risks that could arise from microplastics in food chains, and at the same time work on polymers with special pharmaceutical functions - for example, with regard to a targeted and gentle release of medical active ingredients in the organism.
"There are many interdisciplinary links for my research work here on campus. I am already in contact with some members of the SFB "Microplastics", which has now been extended by the DFG for another four years, and the Transregio SFB "Biofabrication", and I am looking forward to working on exciting joint projects. Initially, the focus for me will be on some basic research questions. Then it will be important to apply the knowledge gained in practice so that our economy and society as a whole become more sustainable and biomedical innovations can be implemented more quickly. In this respect, I am also very interested in business collaborations in the long term."
The new junior professorship for sustainable and functional polymers will further strengthen the University of Bayreuth's sustainability strategy. "I am very pleased to be able to help shape the sustainability profile of our 'Green Campus' in both research and teaching in the coming years," says Leiske.