Leadership

Shu-Kun Lin graduated with a BSc from Wuhan University in January 1982; he also studied physical chemistry at the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1982–1986, MSc in 1985) and at the University of Louisville, USA (1987–1989). He completed his doctorate on organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zürich) in 1992 and subsequently worked at Ciba-Geigy Ltd. (Basel, Switzerland) for three years. He was also a member of Prof. Dr. B. Giese’s group (Organic Chemistry Institute, University of Basel) as a postdoctoral research associate for 6 months in 1996. In the same year, he initiated the sample collection and exchange project; to implement this, he founded the international organization MDPI in Switzerland, launching its inaugural journal, Molecules. He is the founder or co-founder of several other open-access journals, including but not limited to Entropy (1999), the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2000), Sensors (2001), Marine Drugs (2003), and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2004). He became the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer Verlag journal Molecular Diversity in 2002 and held this position until his resignation in June 2007. He is a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) and principal author of over 40 publications.

Andreas Schlatter was born in 1966 and got his PhD in mathematics from ETH Zürich in 1994. He was a member of the faculty of mathematics at Princeton University before joining the Asset Management wing of UBS, the largest Swiss bank, in 1997. He stayed at UBS until 2016 and was CEO of UBS Asset Management Switzerland from 2008-2014 and Global Head of Distribution of the Asset Management division of UBS from 2014-2016. Today Andreas Schlatter is Chairman of the Investment firm Emeran AG and a member of various boards, among them the Swiss financial regulatory authority Finma. He has also been publishing various scientific articles in mathematics and physics over the years.

Dr. Yu Lin graduated with a BSc from Wuhan University of Technology in June 2010, majoring in materials chemistry before working as research assistant in the Experimental Teaching Center of WHUT (2010-2011) while working as a part-time editorial assistant for the MDPI international scientific journal Materials. Dr. Yu Lin obtained his MSc in advanced energy materials from Wuhan University of Technology (2014). During this period, he worked as part-time R&D technician for WUT New Energy Co., Ltd. In 2018, he graduated with a PhD in Materials physics and chemistry from Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (Germany), after studying for 4 years in the group of Prof. Dr. Werner Lehnert at the Laboratory of High Temperature Fuel Cell - IEK-3, Jülich Research Center (Germany). In the last 3 years, Yu has been working closely with the President and the CEO supporting them in various operational areas of MDPI. He has also been a member of the Board of Directors since 2015.

Peter Seitz was born in Basel, Switzerland. He studied physics and obtained his Master’s degree in solid-state/semiconductor physics from ETH Zurich. His Ph.D. thesis, which was also completed at ETH, was on 2D and 3D X-ray imaging and computed tomography. Peter subsequently worked for RCA in Princeton (NJ) and Zurich, for General Electric, for the Paul Scherrer Institute, and for CSEM, where he was Vice President Photonics and Vice President Nanomedicine. From 2000 to 2008, he was Extraordinary Professor of Optoelectronics at the University of Neuchatel, and from 2009 to 2021 he was Adjunct Professor of Optoelectronics at EPFL. Peter was Editor-in-Chief of the MDPI flagship journal Sensors from 2006 to 2010. From 2012 to 2016 he built up the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab of ETH (ieLab), where he was the first Managing Director. Since 2012 Peter has also been working for the Japanese company Hamamatsu Photonics with the role “Senior Technologist Europe”. Peter was co-founder of a dozen deep-tech start-up companies in Switzerland and in the USA, assuming various positions such as CEO, CTO, CSO, Chairman, and board member. Peter is a Fellow of the European Optical Society as well as Vice President of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), Vice President of the European PPP Photonics21, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Werner Siemens Foundation, and Senior Visiting Professor at Shanghai University. Peter Seitz has authored and co-authored approximately 200 publications in the fields of applied optics, semiconductor image sensing, machine vision, optical metrology, and in the MedTech domain. He is the inventor or co-inventor of more than 70 patents, and, together with his teams, he has obtained 25 national and international awards.

Prof. Dr. Peter C. Hauser started his career in chemistry with an apprenticeship as a laboratory technician. He then completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the ZHAW (Zurich University of Applied Sciences) in 1982. Afterward, he obtained an MSc at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, working on ICP-OES, in 1985. Subsequently, he carried out his PhD studies at La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) on Flow-Injection Analysis in 1988. This was followed by postdocs at the ETH Zurich, working on chemical sensors, as well as at the Paul Scherer Institute, Switzerland, working on fuel cells. After a lectureship at Auckland University, New Zealand, from 1991 to 1996, he was given a professorship in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Basel in 1996. His research interests include various aspects of the analytical sciences, including flow-injection analysis, electrochemical detection, capillary electrophoresis, optoelectronic detectors, and miniaturized plasma spectrometers and detectors. A strong focus of his is the use of electronics in analytical devices. Moreover, thanks to the work of his research laboratory, instruments have been developed and are commercially available from eDAQ in Sydney, Australia, and from CE-Line, Emmeloord, the Netherlands. Peter C. Hauser is the co-author of around 245 scientific publications and a member of the editorial advisory boards of Analytica Chimica Acta, Electrophoresis, Sensors, and Molecules, and he is also editor-in-chief of Hardware.

Florian M. Thieringer is an oral and cranio-maxillofacial surgeon and a medical 3D expert, with a focus on tumor, trauma, reconstructive and orthognathic surgery, located at the University Hospital Basel and the University of Basel, Switzerland. Professor Thieringer serves as chair and full professor of oral and cranio-maxillofacial surgery at the University Hospital Basel. He also serves as head of the Medical Additive Manufacturing research group (Swiss MAM) at the University of Basel's Department of Biomedical Engineering (UNIBAS DBE). He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of computer-assisted surgery (CAS) and medical additive manufacturing. He has extensively explored and promoted the integration of virtual surgical planning, 3D printing and other innovative technologies at the point-of-care (POC), including the additive manufacturing of patient-specific implants (PSI) in various (bio-)materials, such as bioprinting and regenerative surgery. Professor Thieringer serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Craniomaxillofacial Trauma & Reconstruction and is a member of several international expert panels and committees.

Since 2016, Florian Thieringer has served as co-director of the multidisciplinary 3D Print Lab at the University Hospital of Basel. Since 2020 he has served as co-principal investigator of the innovative MIRACLE 2 project (Minimally Invasive Robot-Assisted Computer Guided LaserosteotomE). He is a co-applicant and, since 2021, a member of the steering committee of the University Hospital Basel flagship project "Innovation Focus Regenerative Surgery".