Guido Kickelbick is professor at the Institute of Materials Chemistry of the Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Born in Hamm, he studied chemistry at the University of Würzburg, Germany, gaining his PhD in 1997 under Ulrich Schubert on sol-gel derived surface-modified metal oxo clusters. He was subsequently awarded a post-doctoral fellowship with Krzysztof Matyjaszewski at the Center for Macromolecular Engineering at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, on the application of controlled radical polymerization in the formation of hybrid materials. In 1998 he returned to the Vienna University of Technology where he has since worked in the field of hybrid materials and nanocomposites, as well as surface-functionalized nanoparticles with a particular focus on the combination of organic polymers with inorganic components. Professor Kickelbick has published more than 150 papers on different aspects of inorganic, polymer and materials chemistry.