Julian Burschka has spent many years developing materials for efficient solar energy conversion. Notably he pioneered an elegant method to fabricate so-called perovskite solar cells -- seminal research that later was published in Nature and cited several thousand times since.

Born a scientist at heart, Burschka is constantly striving to expand his horizon and is thrilled by new technological discoveries that might fundamentally change our daily lives. More recently, his interest was sparked by ultra-sensitive gas sensors and the detection of volatile organic compounds for various applications.

In his current role as a senior project manager at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Burschka is leading a multinational R&D team that develops smart material solutions to enable next-generation displays. He holds a Master of Business Administration and a PhD in chemistry, both of which he obtained following multilingual studies in Germany, France and Switzerland.