News | Dept. Landfester

Viele Familien kamen zum Science Day. Der bunte Mix aus Kinderuni, Speed Dating und Führungen sprach alle an, die mehr über Polymere wissen wollten. Auf der Bühne halfen viele Kinder beim Backen der Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte und beim Speed Dating konnten Fragen an Forscherinnen gestellt werden.

Tsvetomir Ivanov from our group gave an excellent flash talk and presented a poster about our work on "Short Peptide Coacervates" at the conference on Biomolecular condensates: From fundamental principles to applications in health and biotech, taking place in Copenhagen, May 13–15, 2025. It was great to have so many scientific discussions.

Congratulations to Katja Klein for 20 years in public service. It is a pleasure to have you in our team!

Congratulations to Francesca Mazzotta for obtaining her PhD with the highest distinction.
"Soft matter characterization beyond resolution limit" shows  interdisciplinary work at the interface between nanomaterials & structural biology. Looking forwards to a successful PostDoc at our Institute!

Congratulations to Tsvetomir Ivanov for defending his PhD.
"Development of Multi-Compartment Cell Mimics for Enhanced Biocatalysis" presents engineering&application of multicompartment active materials.
Together with Priyanka Sharan he will lead the artificial cell group in my group.

It was a pleasure presenting our work at the meeting held in Göttingen at the the MPI for Dynamics and Self Organization from 23-24 April. Priyanka Sharan, Zhicheng Wang, Ilona Kalte and Philipp Föckler presented their current research projects. We had stimulating two days filled with insightful talks and productive discussions with our collaborators.

Thanks to the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ). It was great to talk to many group leaders, postdocs and PhD students. Special thanks to José Berrocal and Carla Casadevall for taking me out for a wonderful dinner in Tarragona.

The new "Wissens Bissen" series kicked off yesterday evening with a successful opening event: Jonathan Jung from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Katharina Landfester discussed the topic of ‘Corals as rubbish dumps - What does research say about the threat posed by microplastics?’ in a relaxed atmosphere.
They delved deep into the world of corals and explained how they are organised, how they react to environmental influences and to what extent microplastics can be measured in corals. Of course, they also explained what microplastics actually are and where they come from. Like many other influences, the tiny plastic particles presumably weaken the corals. However, research into this is still in its infancy and it is important to focus on the long term. But one thing is already clear: Microplastics do not belong in the sea.
It was great that so many young people found their way to us. Many questions were raised in a discussion with the interested audience that followed on from our talk. The relaxed setting of the event provided ample opportunity for further discussions. The corals in the accompanying exhibition were met with great interest.
A big thank you to all the helpers who made this event possible, and the engaged audience who joined in the discussion so enthusiastically.

Die Leiter:innen der LernOrte kamen zusammen. Jan Hendrik Winter, Bildungsministerium, und Michael Staaden, Umweltministerium, machten klar, dass die BNE-Strategie dringend weiter in Rheinland-Pfalz verankert werden muss. Workshop, Laborbesuch und Führung über den Pfad rundeten die Agenda ab.

Congratulations to Beate Müller for 40 years in public service. Thank you very much for your many years of collaboration!

We have now updated our discussion corners. The newly designed rooms show moss pictures of the scientists as well as a short biography of their achievements. In the ground floor, the room is dedicated to Marie Curie.

We defended our Cluster of Excellence Proposal "CoM2Life" - Communicating Biomaterials at the DFG in Bonn. We are very proud of being part of this wonderful team consisting of researchers of the MPIP, University of Mainz and TU Darmstadt . May CoM2Life come to life!

Congratulations to Maximilian Schaaf for receiving the Wiley Macromolecular Bioscience poster prize for his poster about "in vivo targeting of splenic and hepatic cDC1 cells via antibody functionalized liposomes" at the International Symposium "Nanomaterials for Tumor Immunotherapy" in Mainz.
 

Two exciting days with many great talks of researchers around the world and researchers from the collaborative research center SFB1066 "Nanomaterials for Tumor Immunotherapy" took place in Mainz last week. After 12 years of research within SFB1066 between MPIP, JGU and Uniclinic Mainz, we are really proud of all the achievements: chemistry and nanomedine really grew closely together.
 

It is a great pleasure to announce that Julian successfully defended his PhD thesis about "Enhancing Reactivity of Heterogeneous Photocatalysts by Tailored Substrate-Catalyst Interactions". Congratulations Dr. Julian Heuer.

It is always sad to say goodbye, but at the same time I am extremely proud to announce that Seunghyeon Kim will start in the Department of Science and Engineering at DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology) as an assistant professor in February 2025. Seunghyeon Kim was a very successful postdoc in my group. It was a pleasure working with him. We wish him all the best and stay connected!

It is our great pleasure to congratulate Dr. Rong Li for sucessfully defending her PhD thesis about: "Stimuli-responsive Polymeric Photocatalysts: Smart, Controllable, and Recyclable Materials for Photocatalytic Reactions".

We are happy to annonce that we actively participate in two recently approved Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung
1. Nanoparticle systems and innovative macromolecules for selective modulation of the liver microenvironment (Nano@Liver) We collaborate together with University of Jena (coordinator: Ulrich S. Schubert), Universitätsmedizin Mainz (coordinator: Stephan Grabbe) and Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
2. Interactive Biomaterials for Neural Regeneration (InteReg): We collaborate here together with Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (coordinators: Claire Jacob, Andreas Walther) and Universitätsmedizin Mainz (coordinator: Ari Waisman)

After the symposium at VISTEC, we visited the bioplastics lab at Chiang Mai University. Volker Mailänder and me gave talks about our research. It was great to see the labs and talk to many researchers. Thanks to Robert Molley and the entire team for the warm welcome.

On October 17 and 18, the international Symposium on Colloid and Interface Science took place at Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology (VISTEC) in Thailand. Volker Mailänder and me represented MPI-P with two talks about "Cascade Reactions in Confined Polymeric Modules" and "Multifunctional Nanocarriers: Enabling Tumor Vaccination by Co-encapsulating Antigen and Adjuvants for Tumor Vaccination in vivo. Thanks to Daniel Crespy and Makoto Ogawa from VISTEC for their great organization. It was also nice to see so many young reseachers and discuss with them science!

Congratulations to Francesca Mazzotta, from my group at the MPIP, for having her abstract selected for a talk at the cryoNET 7th symposium in Aarhus University. The symposium was interdisciplinary focusing on structural biology as well as novel methods to improve structure investigation inside and outside the cell. Thanks to the organisers!

Doctoral researchers from different institutes of the Max Planck Society gathered in Mainz for the annual PhDnet General Meeting. We were happy to contribute to this event by offering guided tours of our Polymerpath and sparking interesting discussions about polymers and our research within the Max Planck community.
Thanks to the organizers and everyone who attended!

It is that time of the year when scientists are anxiously waiting for the Nobel Prize press release! This year my group turned the event into a fun game. We gathered to discuss and predict the winners leading to an exciting scientific discussion. One of the teams successfully predicted protein design and prediction.

Congratulations to the Nobel laureates in Chemistry for the award!

This is the first day of this year's MPIP/UFC exchange program. It is great having scientific exchange and meeting with former colleagues who were at MPIP. Now Katja, Max and Florian are in Fortaleza and visit the lab.

Thanks to the initiative of our group, the outdoor seminar room is now available to all MPIP groups. The tent can be hired, as well as the large outdoor screen for presentations.

Congratulations to three anniversaries: Angela Hördt for 10 years, Anke Kaltbeitzel for 25 years, and Christoph Sieber for 40 years in public service. Thank you very much for your many years of collaboration!

Francesca Mazotta presented at this year's Materials Science and Engineering Congress (MSE2024) in the characterisation symposium how single particle CryoEM can unravel atomically resolved structural information of synthetic peptide nanofibrils. At the international congress held in Darmstadt there was the great opportunity to listen to fanstatic talks and to discuss science in detail.

Prijanka, Gabrielle and Zhicheng presented their work at the GCSB 2024 – German Conference on Synthetic Biology in Regensburg. Thanks to the organizers for this fantastic conference with many discussions and inspiring talks! It was a great experience

Kreisläufe“ war das Thema am KinderUni- und Familientag auf der Zitadelle. Initiiert von der Wissenschaftsallianz. Neben NatLab, Grüne Schule und dem MPIC war auch das MPIP mit einem Stand vertreten: PET-Recycling zum Selbermachen!

Our BIOFABLAB at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Reaserch experienced a beautiful team building activity based on black light mini golf.
It's great to create bonds within the team!

Am Schulprojekttag kamen Schüler:innen des Campus Klarenthal und der Diltheyschule aus Wiesbaden zum Kunststoff Bildungspfad. Eingangs hielt Katharina Landfester einen Vortrag über „Nachhaltigkeit von Kunststoffen“. Danach folgten das Quiz und eine Challenge: wer schafft es, das Ei am besten zu verpacken, damit es den Wurf aus dem Fenster standhält!

Sarah Lembke, Carina Jung, and Zhicheng Wang represented the Landfester department from the MPIP at the ECIS 2024 Conference - European Colloid and Interface Society.

It was an intensive week of presentation, discussions and meetings in Denver. Mischa Bonn was organizer of a session, Tanja Weil and me gave talks about our recent research activities at the 25th anniversary of Biomacroleculs. Volker represented his excellent work about protein corona and extracellular vesicles in two talks. Our senior postdoc Seunghyeon Kim was awarded the 2024 PMSE Future Faculty award. It was a great week and it was fantastic to catch up with so many people to discuss science.

This year, the group retreat of our AK Landfester from the MPIP was on water, either on a huge sailing boat or in small canoes. In both cases, the team spirit was fantastic. We intensively discussed sustainable ideas for the group and the institute, and interacted in many different ways to further strengthen the group. Thanks a lot for many helping hands and a great week full of new ideas. I am very proud of my group and I am looking forwards to our next research challenges.

3 Tage war eine Schülergruppe des Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasiums Mainz in ihrer Projektwoche am MPIP. Es gab zahlreiche Workshops zu Recycling und Biokunststoffen. Am Schluss wurden noch die chemischen Reaktionen beim Backen unter die Lupe genommen. Ein Blick in die Labore gehört immer zu den Highlights.

A delegation from Daejeon Science High School for the Gifted in South Korea visited the MPI with 93 students. Svenja Morsbach, Christine Rosenauer and Ulrike Schneider guided them along the Polymer Path and Seunghyeon Kim presented the institute and its research in the lecture hall. The delegation was thrilled to have been here.

Katharina Landfester (MPIP) und Alexander Throm, LigniLabs, gaben Einblicke in die Nanotechnologie und ihre Chancen. Es folgten ein intensiver Dialog mit Gästen einzelner Disziplinen der Biotechnologie-Branche und ein informativer Spaziergang über den Kunststoff Bildungspfad. Danke an biomindz für die Mitorganisation.

Great to celebrate with so many collegues and alumni the 40th anniversity of the institute. A special symposium on Friday with scientific contributions related to the institute and a reunion day on Saturday let us reminisce about former days at MPIP. Fantastic to welcome so many alumni of AK Landfester. Thanks to the many helping hands to make this event possible.

Congratulations to Laura Dietz who successfully defended her PhD thesis about the exocytosis and about exosmes for nanoparticle delivery. 

The winner of our Science Day photo competition on 28 April visited us today and redeemed her prize: a day at the MPI-P. Nora is in the 4th class and was amazed at how much technology there is in such an institute and how many researchers work here. The visit to the glassblower was a highlight for her.
 

Yesterday a swarm of bees visited the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Stanislav Balouchev, project leader in our department at MPIP, rescued them and gave them a new home. We will be able to study them and establish their health with our homemade setups. We are also looking forwards to some tasty honey. Welcome bees at your new home!

On June 14, we celebrated at MPIP the life of Kai Zhang who passed away untimely on May 24, 2023. Supervisors, former PhD students, collegues, and friends shared memories and impressively demonstrated the influence that Kai's research had and still has on their own research. Thanks to Peter Skabara, Long Chen, Wenxin Wei, Run Li, Martijn Zwijnenburg, Alexander Kühne, Rob Dawson, Paul Blom and Yan Zhao for their great talks, thanks to Calum Ferguson for co-organization. We are glad that Kai's mom and cousin and many friends could be present. It was an emotional day. Kai will never be forgotten.

The administrative heads of all Max Planck Institutes came together at the MPIP and met for 3 days. A visit to the polymerpath was part of it. Christine Rosenauer explained to the guests when the history of polymers began. And much more.

With questionnaire and pencil on the polymer path. More than 200 pupils from Sebastian-Münster-Gymnasium in Ingelheim were with us this week and tried to solve the quiz with 16 questions about polymers. Many stations were visited in small groups - with a focus on sustainability. Where can natural polymers be found, where are fiber-reinforced plastics used, for example in wind turbines, and what role do biopolymers play in today's research?

Directors, group leaders and senior postdocs of the entire Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung meet in the middle of the woods close to Naurod to intensively discuss about pressing issues at the institute and looking towards the future how to create a modern, competitive institute. AK Landfester is actively involved in the discussions with other scientists of the institute.

The Historians4Future with Dr. Andreas Frings on the Polymer Path of our institute. One of the questions of relevance was: How relevant were historical references for the invention and further development of polymers in the 1930/40s and what is the situation today? Interesting new insights!

We had a highly stimulating joint meeting with the partners about all kinds of fluids. From our department, Thao Phuong Doan Nguyen, Tsvetomir Ivanov and Yuri Avlasevich gave talks. Thanks to the organizers for a great event.

Around 250 visitors attended the Family Day and made use of the wide range of different activities, including a Kids' University, guided tours, speed dating and a photo competition for school children. The numerous  visitors showed that children and their families are grateful for such an opportunity to learn more about polymers and the research at the MPIP.
 

On 25th of April, 20 girls visited the MPI-P. They got the opportunity to carry out experiments on the topics of superamphiphobic surfaces, chromatography and superabsorbers and they also learnt how to come up with a conclusion starting with a hypothesis by means of observation. After the lunch break, they visited the Polymer Path. The girls were really impressed about the many different research topics at the MPI-P.

Goodbye to Shoupeng. We will miss him in our group and wish him all the best for this professorship at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.

Fresh woodchippings and the Polymer Path shines in new splendour! We would like to draw your attention to the Science Day on 28 April with a programme for the whole family! more

We had a very intense and intersting biomolecular corona workshop in Kopenhagen. Thanks to Professor Ben Boyd for the great organization.

Everybody knows how difficult it can be to answer questions after a talk. We had a great workshop with Ric Oquita from Impulsplus to get prepares for the Audience Discussion. Thanks Ric for all your helpful advices!

Congratulations to Ingo Lieberwirth for 25 years of great electron microscopy work at MPIP!

A two-day workshop in the Staudinger Lecture Hall with Annette Birkholz from the Bogenakademie in Berlin: "Archery as a Blueprint for Leadership – Hitting the target without targeting". How can leaders focus on their own strengths and adopt an inner attitude in order to lead the team better. Intuitive archery was a real experience!

From December 11-12, the Max Planck Center for Complex Fluid Dynamics Mainz - Twente held a symposium to exchange ongoing research and discuss joint projects. We were happy to have the meeting in Mainz and already look forward to the next one! more

Here is our own "Beauty at MPIP" art contest winner! Congrats to Daksh for submitting "Bert from Sesame Street".
Check out the beautiful SEM image!

Francesca Mazzotta and Maria Micheva are back form an exciting exchange with our collaborator Pablo Froimowicz at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. It was a great learning experience to exchange knowledge overseas. More updates on this exchange are soon to come so stay tuned!

We hosted the Regional Conference by the Network of Education for Sustainable Development Schools. The full-day programme with a guided tour along the Polymer Path and two workshops was very intensive. There were many discussions on both thematic modules. The aim was for the teachers to deepen their basic knowledge so that they could pass on what they had learnt to their pupils or even plan their next trip to the Polymer Path.

A group from several working groups and service points travelled to Gernsheim and Grünstadt on November 2nd. In Gernsheim there is a large sorting plant that sorts the waste from the Yellow Bag or Yellow Bin in a complex process and with large facilities. The second plant, "Kunststoff Recycling Grünstadt", takes the pre-sorted plastic packaging and uses the most modern technology to produce regranulate of the same quality as virgin material. After the visit it was clear: recycling is a science in itself.

Congratulations to Dr. Jenny Schunke for successfully passing her defense of her PhD thesis about adjuvance-loaded nanocapsules that induce effective antitumoral immune response.

Two great poster prizes for our group at the CLINAM conference in Basel! Congratulations to Laura Dietz and Carina Jung! Thanks to to organizers for an inspiring conference.

Great BOW meeting of the EU project in Rostock! It was again great to see that different groups with their expertise in different fields work together towards a common goal. more

Daksh joined the summer school Deep Learning and Computer Vision (DLCV) at Genova, Italy. It was a great opportunity to meet new people and learn new technologies with hands on experience. Finally, in the group project presentations, his group won the award for the most novel idea and best presentation.

Visit from scientists from Costa Rica. To study the extraordinary properties of the skin of the velvet worm (Epiperipatus biolleyi) native to Costa Rica, the AK-Landfester had three scientists from CeNAT as guests.

Tsvetomir Ivanov gave a talk at The Sense-Compute-Response Paradigm Workshop in Darmstadt about his work on adaptive multi-compartmentalized microreactors obtained by oleyl alcohol-assisted polymersome assembly. It was a great opportunity to meet and discuss ideas with the leading researchers in the field. more

Congratulations to Dr. Richard da Costa Marquez to the successful defense of his PhD thesis about Proteomic studies on intracellular nanocarrier trafficking and regenerative bone substitute materials.

Francesca Mazzotta, Iain Harley, and Ingo Lieberwirth joined a SuperCol meeting in Fribourgh in February, where they discussed new aspects of super-resolution microscopy for the localization of functional groups on nanoscaled colloids. more

Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Oberländer to the successful defense of her PhD thesis about the effect of temperature on the protein corona around nanoparticles and the exocytosis of nanoparticles from cells.