Ullrich (Ulli) Steiner is Professor of Soft Matter Physics at the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) of the University of Fribourg, serves as AMI’s director, and also leads the Swiss National Center of Compe­ten­ce in Research Bio-Inspired Materials.

Ulli was educated at University of Konstanz (Germany) and the Weizmann Institute of Sceince (Israel). He held previous appointments as a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute, the Institute Charles Sadron (France), and as senior scientist at the University of Konstanz.

Ulli’s main research interests lie in the structure-function relationship of materials at the nanoscale. His current research projects encompas energy materials for photovoltaics and batteries, and optical metamaterials, and the role of disorder in photonic structures.

Ulli has taught physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering students in Switzerland, the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and in Germany, and has mentored more than 85 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. He has co-authored more than 310 research papers and book chapters.