Eduard Arzt

Arzt studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna, where he received his Ph.D. in 1980. Subsequent to a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Cambridge, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart. In 1989/90 he spent a year as visiting professor at Stanford University. In 1990 he was appointed to the Chair for Physical Metallurgy/Metal Physics at Stuttgart University, with a joint appointment as director at the MPI for Metals research (today the MPI for Intelligent Systems). In 1996 he taught as visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003 he became Managing Director at the MPI in Stuttgart. On October 1, 2007, he took the position as Scientific Director and Chairman at Leibniz Institute for New Materials (INM) in Saarbrücken and was appointed Professor for New Materials at Saarland University. Under his leadership, the Leibniz Institute was thematically re-oriented and turned into an interdisciplinary center for modern materials research.

Arzt has been invited for research stays and endowed lectures by numerous institutions, among them the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the Case Western Reserve University, the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Vienna and Graz Technological University. Arzt is Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Materials Science, a leading review journal in the field of materials science. About 20 of his former group members have been awarded important professorships in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Korea and the USA; likewise they are now in leading positions in the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz Association, the Fraunhofer Society and the Helmholtz Association.

Arzt has worked in numerous fields of materials science, ranging from high-temperature structural alloys, micro and nanomechanics of thin film materials, mechanisms of electromigration and degradation in miniaturized materials systems to the modeling of materials properties under extreme conditions. His current research focus lies on the synthesis and characteriztaion of bio-inspired adhesive surfaces and their commercialization in robotics and automation.[2][3]

• Masing Award, German Materials Society (DGM), 1985[4]
• Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis, German Ministry for Education and Research, 1988
• Acta Metallurgica Outstanding Paper Award, 1990
• Max-Planck-Forschungspreis (with William D. Nix, Stanford), 1990
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, 1996[5]
• R.S. Williams Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996
• Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1997[6]
• Member of Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, 2002[7]
• Advanced Grant, European Research Council (ERC), 2013[8]
• Heyn Memorial Coin, DGM, 2017[9]
• Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, 2020[10][11]

• Eduard Arzt publications indexed by Google Scholar