Distinguished Professor
Christopher Barner-Kowollik

Biography

Distinguished Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik is a leading researcher in the field of macromolecular photochemistry, exploring with his team of PhD students and post-doctoral research fellows how light can be finely gated to generate advanced soft matter materials, including via light-driven 3D printing methodologies. He has pioneered a wide array of precision photochemical transformations using multiple colours of light and is a pioneer in understanding photochemical reactivity via so-called ‘action plots’. He heads a small research team at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and a larger one at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

A PhD graduate in chemistry from Göttingen University, Germany, Christopher 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 (KIT) in 2008, where he established and led a German Research Council funded Centre of Excellence in soft matter synthesis and served as the Head of School of the School of Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry at the KIT. 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 (KIT).

Over this 26-year career to date, he has attracted over $65M in funding including from the German Research Council, the Helmholtz Association, the Australian Research Council and the private sector. He has developed and supported highly collaborative large teams, often across continents. He has authored over 800 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals, which have been cited over 53,000 times.

He has been awarded a wide array of national and international awards, including from the German Helmholtz Association, the CNRS, the UK Macro Group, the Belgian Polymer Group, the European Polymer Federation, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the Royal Society of New South Wales and the Australian Academy of Science. In 2023, he received the Centenary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is a fellow of several learned societies, including the Australian Academy of Science.