Julian Thiele is leading the Polymer Microbioreactors group at the Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e.V., one of five young investigator teams of the Leibniz Research Cluster in Germany. His focus is on miniaturized cell-free biotechnology combining additive manufacturing, droplet microfluidics, sensitive hydrogels and metabolic engineering. 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. 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.