Prof. Alexander Michaelis studied physics at the University of Düsseldorf where he earned his Ph-D and state doctorate (habil) in materials science. In 1995 he became faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. In 1996 he switched to Siemens AG working as senior process integration engineer in the field of microelectronics in East Fishkill, New York. In 2000, he started to work for the corporate research department of Bayer AG in Leverkusen and the Bayer subsidiary H.C. Starck GmbH heading the New Business Development department.

Since 2004, Prof. Michaelis is president of Fraunhofer IKTS with more than 800 employees and a yearly budget of over 76 Mio €. Additionally, he is full professor for Ceramics at TU Dresden. He filed 42 patent families and published more than 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals and books. He received numerous awards.

In 2009 he was elected as academician of “World Academy of Ceramics WAC”. In 2012 he received the ACerS Bridge Building Award for his contribution in the field of energy and environmental technology. In 2014 he received the Fraunhofer Medal for outstanding achievements in the field of applied materials research and in 2015, the LEE HSUN Award on Materials Science of the Chinese Academy of Science. In 2016 he became Fellow of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS) due to his long commitment and outstanding contributions to applied research and development of advanced ceramics. In 2017 he was appointed Fellow of the European Ceramic Society (ECerS) and received the “Medal of Leadership” of ACERS for his outstanding contribution for the Advancement of Ceramics Technology.

In 2019, he was elected as President of the German Ceramic Society (DKG e.V.) and the FDKG (Research organization of DKG).