Wolfgang Knoll earned a PhD degree in Biophysics from the University of Konstanz in 1976. From 1991-1999 he was the laboratory director for Exotic Nanomaterials in Wako, Japan, at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN). From 1993 to 2008, he was appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, and since April 1, 2008, he is the Scientific Managing Director of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. The same year, he received the Exner Medal of the Austrian Trade Association, became in 2010 a Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, received in 2011 an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and became a member of the Academia Europaea in 2017. He published more than 950 papers with nearly 56000 citations that earned him an h-index of 122 (Google Scholar).