Celestino Padeste (born 1961 in Zürich/Switzerland) studied chemistry at the University of Zürich, from where he received a PhD degree in 1989 in the field of inorganic solid state / gas phase reactions. After a Post-Doc at the University of New South Wales in Sydney/Australia, which was focused on surface analysis of catalyst systems, he was in 1993 employed at the Micro- and Nanotechnology Laboratory at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen/Switzerland, in the frame of a biosensor project in the molecular nanotechnology group. Since 2003 he is a senior scientist in the polymer nanotechnology group in the same laboratory. His research is focused on the design of functional surfaces by combination of micro- and nanostructuring methods, including synchrotron-based lithography, with chemical surface modification, polymer grafting and protein immobilization. He is supervising PhD students and Post-Docs in basic and application-related research projects. He is a coauthor of more than 75 scientific papers and 4 patents. Sonja Neuhaus (born 1983 in Aarau, Switzerland) is a project leader in the area of polymer nanotechnology at the Institute for Polymer Nanotechnology (INKA) at the University of Applied Sciences (Windisch, Switzerland). She graduated with a Master of Science in materials science with honours from the ETH Zurich in 2008.
From 2008-2011 she worked as a PhD student in the laboratory for micro- and nanotechnology (LMN) at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Villigen. Her thesis on the "Functionalization of Polymer Surfaces with Polyelectrolyte Brushes" was supervised by Prof. N.D. Spencer of the Laboratory of Surface Science and Technology at the ETH Zurich and by Dr. C. Padeste (LMN). Working as a project leader in the R&D department of Glas Trösch AG from 2011 to 2013, she extended and deepened her knowledge on methods for coating and functionalizing surfaces.
S. Neuhaus is (co-)author of several publications. Main research interests include modification and functionalization of (polymer) surfaces, organic coatings, wettability and wetting phenomena on flat and structured surfaces, surface analysis, polymer technology.