Manuel Tsotsalas

Following my High School Diploma in Düsseldorf, including a one year stay abroad at Austin High School in Minnesota, and a year of civil service at the University Clinic, I studied Chemistry at the University of Münster. During my studies I spent a semester in Rennes, France in the group of Werner Paulus and received my Diploma in 2006. Afterwards, I started my PhD in the group of Luisa DeCola, which I defended in 2010. During my PhD I had the opportunity to visit the lab of Uli Wiesner at Cornell University, USA. In 2010 I joined the Lab of Susumu Kitagawa in the group of Shuhei Furukawa at Kyoto University in Japan. In 2013 I joined the group of Christof Wöll at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and in 2015 I received funding by the Helmholtz association to establish my independent group at the Institute of Functional Interfaces and the Institute of Organic Chemistry in Karlsruhe. In 2019 I completed my Habilitation, mentored by Stefan Bräse at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biosciences at KIT.
In my personal life I am married and father of two sons. I like running, swimming, and biking (I occasionally participate in Triathlon events to keep me motivated) and sometimes try to prepare Japanese or Greek cuisine. I also like watching football matches e.g. when travelling to the FIFA World Cup tournaments (I visited games in Germany 2006, South Africa 2010, Brazil 2014, and Russia 2018), where I support both the German and Greek national teams.
Yixuan Jia
PhD Candidate
Research topic:
Covalent adaptable networks based on dynamic alkoxyamine bonds, nitroxide mediated polymerization, two-photon 3D lithography


Ilona Wagner
PhD Candidate
Research topic:
Synthesis improvement of MOF/polymer hybrid materials via machine learning tools for application improvement in biology/medicine
Yi Luo
PhD Candidate
Research topic:
Data-driven approaches in MOF study


Lena Pilz
PhD Candidate
Research topic:
Synthesisoptimizations, SURMOFs, Machine learning based methods, Nanoparticles
Simon Spiegel
PhD Candidate
Research topic:
MOF-Polymer-Hybridmaterials, Surface Functionalization


Emily Bevier
Student assistant
Research topic:
Synthesis improvement of MOF/polymer hybrid materials via machine learning tools for application improvement in biology/medicine
Eva Gabriel
Master student
Research topic:
Machine learning optimization of PolyMOFs
