Prof. Alexander Michaelis President of Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, Germany Prof. Alexander Michaelis studied physics at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany and graduated with a diploma thesis in laser and plasma physics. Subsequently he switched to the field of physical chemistry and received his doctorate in electrochemistry. In 1995 he spend one year as faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. There, he worked on high temperature superconductors YBCO and Si-based microelectronic systems. In 1996 he accepted a position at Siemens AG working as senior process integration engineer in the field of microelectronics amongst others at the DRAM Development Alliance in East Fishkill, New York. In 2000, he began to work for the corporate research department of Bayer AG in Leverkusen. From there he was delegated to H.C. Starck GmbH, a Bayer subsidiary, where he was head of the Electroceramics and the New Business Development department. Furthermore, he was the managing director of InDEC B.V. working in the field of solid oxide fuel cells. During this time he also finished his state doctorate (habilitation treatise) at University of Düsseldorf. Since 2004, Prof. Michaelis is presid