Dr. Juergen Biener was born in 1961 in Augsburg, Germany. He studied chemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and conducted his doctoral research in the field of surface science at the Max-Planck-Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching. In 1997 he received a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to work with Bob Madix at Stanford University on metal oxide model catalysts. In 2000 he returned to the IPP to continue his research on plasma-wall interactions. In 2003 he accepted a visiting scientist position at the Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Structures at Harvard University where he developed a new view of the reactivity of gold surfaces. Currently, he is one of the leaders in the Nanoscale Synthesis and Characterization Laboratory at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research interest lies at the intersection of surface chemistry, physics and mechanics of nanostructured materials.