Anke Weidenkaff is a professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt and head of the Fraunhofer IWKS. Her areas of expertise are materials science and resource strategies, including the development, synthesis and characterization of substitute materials for energy conversion and storage. Current work focuses on self-healing materials and the development of next-generation process technologies for fast and efficiently closed material cycles. Anke Weidenkaff doctorate in chemistry from the ETH Zurich in 2000, received the Venia Legendi for solid-state chemistry and Materials Science from the University of Augsburg in 2006 and became a department head at Empa and associate professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland. From 2013-2018 she was Chair of the Materials Chemistry and Director of the Institute for Materials Science at the University of Stuttgart, President of the European Thermoelectric Society (ETS), elected member of the E-MRS Executive Committee and Chair of the E-Spring Conference 2019. In 2011 she was awarded the prize awarded the Kavli Foundation Lectureship. She published around 250 SCI publications on materials research in energy conversion technologies.