Volker Presser

Volker Presser is Leader of the Junior Investigator Group “Energy Materials” at the INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials, and Assistant Professor at the Department for Materials Science and Engineering, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. Studying Applied Mineralogy at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany, he received his Diploma in 2006 and his doctor’s degree in 2009. Being awarded the Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he joined Drexel University, Philadelphia (USA), as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2010 and continued in the NanoMaterials Group at the A. J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute as an Assistant Research Professor until 2012.

He has published more than 70 peer reviewed papers, 8 book chapters, filed one patent, and edited one book. Dr. Presser has received several awards, such as the Bernd Rendel Prize (2008) and the Heinz Maier Leibnitz (2013) award of the German Research Foundation (2008), the Hanns Bruno Geinitz Award of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum (2009), and the Bayer Early Excellence in Science Award (2012). He has received two second places in the 2011 Ceramographic Competition of The American Ceramic Society and was nominated for the ACerS Future Leaders Program (2012).

Today, his research activities focus on the synthesis, characterization, and application of functional materials, mostly carbon nanomaterials for energy storage applications. Dr. Presser is developing advanced materials for electrochemical and electrical energy storage (supercapacitors, pseudocapacitors, and hybrid capacitors) and technologies for efficient water purification.