Christoph Gerber is the director for Scientific Communication at the Institute of Physics, University of Basel.
Christoph Gerber is the co-inventor of the atomic force microscope. He was among the 250 most cited living physicists in the world in the year 2000.
Currently, he is the Director for Scientific Communication of the NCCR (National Center of Competence in Research Nanoscale Science) at the Department of Physics, University of Basel, Switzerland, and a founding member of the NCCR. He was formerly a Research Staff Member in Nanoscale Science at the IBM Research Laboratory in Rueschlikon, Switzerland, and has served as a project leader in various programs of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
For the past 25 years, his research has been focused on Nanoscale Science. He is a pioneer in Scanning Probe Microscopy, and he made major contributions to the invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), and the AFM in vacuum and at low-temperatures he is also a co-inventor of Biochemical sensors based on AFM Technology.
He is the author and co-author of more than 150 scientific papers that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and has been cited more than 22'500 times in cross-disciplinary fields. He belongs to the one hundred worldwide most cited researchers in Physical Sciences. He has given numerous plenary and invited talks at international conferences.
His work has been recognized with multiple honorary degrees and various awards and appeared in numerous articles in daily press and TV coverage. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the World Technology Network World Technology Network and a Fellow of the Institute of physics UK. His IP portfolio contains 37 patents and patent publications. His private interest range from literature (scientific and a good novel) to art and sports (he is a passionate skier and plays an acceptable round of golf). He has one daughter, Corina Britta, and is married to Rosemary(Kiki)Fraser.
His current interests include
- Biochemical sensors based on AFM Technology
- Chemical surface identification on the nanometer scale with AFM
- Nanomechanics, nanorobotics, molecular devices at the ultimate limits of measurement and fabrication
- Atomic Force Microscopy research on insulators
- Single Spin Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy (MRFM)
- Self-organization and self-assembly at the nanometer scale