Cross-Appointments:
    • The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
      Faculty of Engineering
    • The Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
      Faculty of Engineering
    • The Department of Chemistry
      Faculty of Science
    • The Department of Medical Biophysics,
      Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
      Memberships:
    • School of Biomedical Engineering
      Faculty of Engineering

    PLEASE NOTE: I am retired, have moved back to Germany, and do not take any graduate students anymore.


    I am a physicist who was educated at the Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

    My diploma thesis work was conducted in the group of Prof. Paul Leiderer in the Department of Physics at the Johannes-Gutenberg University on the topic of " The Investigation of the Phase Transition between Amorphous and Crystalline Tetracene by Raman Spectroscopy" in 1986.

    For my PhD I joined the group of Prof. Wolfgang Knoll at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz and graduated in 1989 with a biophysical topic: "Charge Induced Phase Separation in Black Lipid Membranes".

    In 1990 I became a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. George Stegeman at the Optical Sciences Center of the University of Arizona and at CREOL of the University of Central Florida. My research interests during this period were polymeric waveguide devices for nonlinear optical application and spectroscopy.

    In 1993 I returned to the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research to build up the integrated optics group. The linear optical characterization of nonlinear optical materials for waveguide application was one aim within the project. New waveguide devices and concepts for sensor application including chemical active sensing layers immobilized on top of the waveguide devices were the focus of our interest as well as metal nano particles. Optical techniques, XPS, AFM and spontaneous desorption time-of-flight mass spectrometry were frequently used for the analysis of surface functionalizations. Methods for the independent determination of the refractive index and the geometrical thickness of ultrathin films were developed.

    In 2000 I conducted my "Habilitation" in the Physical Chemistry Department of the Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz and gave birth to twin boys. My partner is a mineralogist and actively involved in research too.

    Since September 2003 I have been a member of the faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Western. I am running the Laboratory for Photonics of Surfaces and Interfaces. I was holding a Tier I Canada Reaserch Chair for 7 years (2004-2011). In September 2010 I have received an Award of Appreciation from Sciencetech Inc., London, Ontario. My research was selected various times for an issue of the Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research (published by the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics) which publishes articles from participating publishers, covering a focused area of frontier research.

    I am active in various administrative and organisational institutions at the departemantal, faculty and university level. In the moment I am the Graduate Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

    In 2018, I was honored by the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden, Germany with a Honary Professorship in Engineering.

    last updated: March 2024