Katrin specialises inpolymer chemistry, reaction kinetitcs, material modification and functionalisation
Katrin studied pure chemistry (Dipl. Chem.) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, where she also obtained her PhD in the field of polymer chemistry under Prof. Christopher Barner-Kowollik. In the collaboration project with the chemical production company BASF, she studied the reaction kinetics of a range of industrially important acrylates and methacrylates to determine datasets useful for planning of space-time yields, reactor setups, polymer properties in large scale production, or modelling and selection of suitable controlling agents. Before joining the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and Center for Advanced Imaging (CAI) as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of CI Professor Kristofer Thurecht in 2020, she worked as a researcher in the Soft Matter Materials labs at the Queensland University of Technology. At QUT she investigated chemiluminesent peroxyoxalate reactions as potential trigger and read-out mechanisms, employing PO-CL reactions as a chemical light source for photochemical transformations. In Kristofer’s group she will apply her background in organic and (photo)polymer chemistry to develop new and customized materials for affinity membranes for the targeted electro-separation of high value macromolecules from blood plasma. Through manipulation of the chemical and physical properties of the polymeric membranes, she aims to improve the selectivity and specificity of currently employed protein separation techniques.