Malte Gather: OLEDs to increase specificity for optogenetic applications
Optogenetics allows researchers to improve the way neuronal circuits can be studied.
Malte C. Gather develops new photonic tools for the life sciences and performs fundamental research on the photonics of soft organic materials. He is most well-known for his Guinness World Record invention of the 'living laser.' Together with his interdisciplinary team at the University of St Andrews, he currently develops a range of novel biocompatible and implantable photonic devices.
Gather studied physics and material sciences at RWTH Aachen University and Imperial College London. In 2008, he received his PhD from the University of Cologne for work on crosslinkable organic semiconductors and organic LEDs. As a postdoc at University of Iceland and later as Bullock-Wellman Fellow at Harvard University, he worked on optical amplification in plasmonic waveguides and opto-biological devices, in particular lasers based on single biological cells.
Gather was assistant professor at TU Dresden (Germany) from 2011 to 2013 before getting a full professorship at the University of St Andrews (UK).
