Dechema Prize 2023 for Dipl.-Phys. Dr. Felix Löffler

The Dechema Prize 2023, endowed with 20,000 euros, will be presented on September 12, 2024 at the Dechema Forum in Friedrichshafen. New technologies for the production of microarrays - in particular the multi-material nano-3D printer invented by Felix Löffler - enable high-throughput analyses for disease research, diagnostics and materials research for the first time. With his working group, he is researching the creation of complex microarrays that offer many different biomolecules or materials on the surface. Among other things, these arrays will be used to find new biomarkers for diseases and develop new catalysts for a decarbonized future. His working group is characterized by a high degree of interdisciplinarity: It conducts research in the fields of chemistry (surface chemistry, parallel organic synthesis), materials science (synthesis of composite materials, catalysts), engineering (machine development, robotics, process automation), physics (laser processing, simulation, machine learning) and biology, biotechnology, bioinformatics (protein interactions, infectious diseases).

Felix Löffler studied physics and biophysics in Heidelberg and graduated in 2009. During his doctorate, he was a fellow of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He was able to obtain a postdoctoral fellowship from the Carl Zeiss Foundation for a junior research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), enabling him to conduct his first independent research in engineering sciences and biotechnology. Since 2017, he has been a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPIKG) in Potsdam, where he won the €2.25 million BMBF NanoMatFutur competition for young scientists with the project "cLIFT - a high-throughput synthesis method for on-demand molecular libraries". Based on his invention - the multi-material nano-3D printer - he was able to establish his independent, solely externally funded group at the MPIKG in the field of chemistry and process engineering.
In the course of his young career, he has been awarded a number of honors and scholarships (DFG Heisenberg, BMBF NanoMatFutur, ERC StG reserve list, Carl Zeiss Scholarship, Gips-Schüle Prize). Felix Löffler has also applied for nine patents, six of them as lead inventor, and has been invited to numerous lectures and prestigious events over the years. Since 2020 he has been a selected member of the Early Career Advisory Board of Chemistry - A European Journal, and since 2021 a member of the selection committee of the Nexus Program of the Carl Zeiss Foundation.