Julian Thiele is group leader at the Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e.V., and Young Investigator at the TU Dresden. He received his BSc from Lund University, and his diploma in Chemistry from Hamburg University in 2008. He joined the group of D. A. Weitz at Harvard University, and graduated from Bayreuth University in the group of Stephan Förster in 2011, for which he was awarded the Culture Award Bavaria. As a Feodor-Lynen fellow of the Humboldt Foundation, he worked with Wilhelm T. S. Huck at Radboud University Nijmegen before joining the TU Dresden from 2014 to 2015. His research interest focusses on miniaturized cell-free biotechnology combining high-resolution additive manufacturing, droplet microfluidics, and stimuli-responsive hydrogels, as recognized by the Georg Manecke Prize 2019. He is also co-founder and now leader of the Leibniz Application Laboratory “Additive Manufacturing / 3D printing”.