Rate My Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik

Distinguished Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik is a leading researcher in the field of macromolecular photochemistry within the Faculty of Science at Queensland University of Technology. A PhD graduate in chemistry from Göttingen University, Germany, he joined the University of New South Wales in early 2000, rising to lead the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design in 2006 as one of its directors. He returned to Germany to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2008, where he established and led a German Research Council funded Centre of Excellence in soft matter synthesis and served as Head of the School of Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry. Following a period as an adjunct professor and collaborator with QUT, he moved to QUT in early 2017 and established QUT’s Soft Matter Materials Laboratory, now one of the world’s premier photochemical macromolecular laboratories. From 2019 to 2025 he served as QUT's Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and from 2023 to 2025 additionally as Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor. In 2026, he was appointed Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor and Institute Director at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, while maintaining a fractional appointment as Distinguished Professor in Materials at QUT.

Over his career, he has attracted over $65M in funding and authored over 800 peer-reviewed publications cited more than 53,000 times. He has pioneered precision photochemical transformations using multiple colours of light and advanced understanding of photochemical reactivity via action plots, with applications in advanced soft matter materials and light-driven 3D printing. He has received numerous awards, including the Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2017, the Centenary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2023, the QUT Vice-Chancellor's Excellence Award for Leadership Excellence in 2019, and fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Polymer Chemistry from 2017 to 2024 and is a fellow of several learned societies.