Stefan Bräse was born in Kiel, Germany, in 1967 and studied chemistry in Göttingen, Bangor (UK) and Marseille (France). In 1995, he obtained his doctorate after working with Armin de Meijere at the University of Göttingen. After post-doctoral appointments at Uppsala University, Sweden (J.-E. Bäckvall) and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA (K. C. Nicolaou), he began his independent research career at the RWTH Aachen associated with Dieter Enders in1997 and finished his habilitation in 2001. He became Professor at the University of Bonn that same year. Since 2003, he is Full Professor at the University of Karlsruhe  - in October 2009 renamed to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Stefan Bräse has published more than 100 publications and is recipient of the ORCHEM award in 2000. His research interests include methods in drug-discovery (including drug delivery), combinatorial chemistry towards the synthesis of biologically active compounds, total synthesis of natural products and nanotechnology.