Reinhard Schweitzer-Stenner

Reinhard Schweitzer-Stenner was born in Herne/Germany. He received his diploma in Physics from the University of Wuppertal (1980), his doctoral degree (Dr rer. nat.) in Physics from the University of Bremen (1983), and his habilitation (venia legendi) from this institution in 1990. After his habilitation he held a faculty position at the University of Bremen until 1999. In addition, Professor Schweitzer-Stenner worked as a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot/Israel (1985/ 1986) and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1993/1994).

In 1999, he became an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras. In 2003, he joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia; he retired from this institution as professor emeritus in August 2022.

Schweitzer-Stenne remains active with a research group that explores the self-assembly of short peptides. Over the last 20 years, his Biospectroscopy Research Group examined the structure−function relationship of membrane-bound cytochrome c, determined conformational distributions of peptides, and explored the rules underlying the self-assembly and gelation of low molecular weight peptides. Multiple grants from the National Science Foundation supported his interdisciplinary and collaborative research. He has published more than 200 papers and book articles in peer-reviewed journals.

During his active tenure at Drexel, he taught all major physical chemistry classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. As a result, undergraduate and graduate students from the Biospectroscopy Research Group embarked on very successful careers.