Biosketch
Flemming Besenbacher is a full Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Faculty of Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. He received his doctoral degree in Natural Sciences from Aarhus University. His current research activities include the development and use of scanning probe microscopies and variety of other surface sensitive techniques for the study of i) clean and adsorbate-covered surfaces, ii) synthesis and characterization of nanostructures on surfaces, iii) dynamic phenomena on surface by fast-scanning STM, iv) self-assembled molecular nanostructures, v) biomolecules and self-assembled nanoparticles under liquid conditions, and vi) biocompatible surfaces
He is director and founder of the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (www.inano.au.dk) and head of the graduate school (www.iNANOschool.dk). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Carlsberg Foundation, the Carlsberg Breweries A/S, and of the Tuborg Foundation. He was vice-director of the centre of excellence Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics (1993-2003) (www.phys.au.dk/spm) sponsored by the Danish National Research Foundation. From 2009 he acts as Director of the Sino-Danish Center of Excellence “Center for Molecular Nanostructures on Surfaces”.
Prof. Besenbacher is the recipient of numerous awards, e.g. from the Danish Physical Society (NKT-prize 1995) for outstanding research within the area of scanning probe microscopy, and the Danish “Velux Award” for outstanding achievements in natural and technical science, especially in the area of nanoscience, the 2006 Grundfos award, the 2008 Bird-Steward-Lightwood Lectureship award at the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008 Recipient of one of the prestigious ERC advanced research grants from the European Research Council. In 2007 he was knighted by the Queen of Denmark and awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog. In 2007 he was awarded a Doctor honoris causa at Henan University and Tianjin University (China), in 2008 at Huazhong Normal University (China), Jilin University (China) and Zhejiang University of Technology (China). In 2009 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society, the American Vacuum Society, and the Materials Research Society and was awarded an Honorary Einstein Professorship at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He is a member of numerous prestigious Danish and international academies/societies/committees, (e.g., the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, The Danish Academy of Technical Sciences, the US Materials Research Society, American Vacuum Society, Institute of Physics, Institute of Nanotechnology, editorial and advisory boards, he acts at the Fachbeirat at Max-Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, and via his membership of the Danish Natural Science Research Council he has served as a Danish representative on several EU committees. He acts as referee for top-ranked journals within his field, and has since 1990 given more than 150 invited talks at international conferences and over 70 talks at research institutions and universities world-wide. He has published more than 400 papers in international journals and several in high-impact journals such as Nature, Science, Phys. Rev. Lett., and Angew. Chem. His published articles have been cited 11,406 times, and his H-index is 60
