Stefan is an organic chemist by education. He obtained his diploma in chemistry at the University of Bonn, Germany, and his PhD at the Technical University of Berlin. After a postdoctoral research stay at Columbia University in New York, he started his professional career at Novartis in Switzerland in the field of drug discovery with a focus on proteases. Stefan then moved on to Evonik as a project manager and process chemist. During this time, he gained extensive experience in managing chemical R&D projects and transferring them to production scale. After spending 3 years in Tokyo, Japan, being responsible for the Asian-Pacific Health Care sales department, he took over his current position in Germany as Vice President, R&D for Evonik Health Care, a business line of Evonik focusing on complex API manufacturing services, pharma and food ingredients and drug delivery technologies.