Katharina Landfester joined the Max Planck Society in 2008 as one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. She studied chemistry at the technical university of Darmstadt. Her diploma thesis was undertaken at the Ecole d’Application des Hautes Polymères in Strasbourg (Prof. M. Lambla). In 1995 she received her doctoral degree in physical chemistry from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz after working with Prof. H. W. Spiess at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research on the synthesis and characterization of core-shell latexes by transmission electron microscopy and solid state NMR.