After his two-year period of office as chair we gratefully thank Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schembecker (TU Dortmund) for his strong commitment during the very successful start-up phase of the DDIC. During this phase already eight PhD students started their theses, the DDIC expanded to a vivid community of currently 11 members and the first expansion stage of lab space in the Invite research center in Cologne is close to completion.

Peter Kleinebudde is a pharmacist by training and he finished his dissertation at the University Kiel in 1987. He then spent some years at Glaxo GmbH, Germany, in Pharmaceutical Development and Bulk Production. Between 1991 and 1997 he worked as research scientist at the University of Kiel and received the German 'Habilitation'. During a stay at the Royal Danish School of Pharmacy he was appointed as associate professor at the University Halle-Wittenberg in 1998. From 2002 to 2003 he was the Dean of the School of Pharmacy. In 2003 he was nominated as full professor for Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutcs at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. Since 2015 he is Vice-Dean of the University and will serve as Dean from December 2019.

Peter is a member of several scientific societies. He was president of the International Association for Pharmaceutical Technology (APV) from 2002 to 2010. 2010 to 2016 he was chairing the APV focus group Solid Dosage Forms. In 2004 he was elected as AAPS Fellow. In 2013 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Szeged (Hungary) and in 2017 he received the PPD Award in Japan. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Eur. J. Pharm. Biopharm., J. Pharm. Sci., Int. J. Pharm., AAPS PharmSciTech, Pharm. Dev. Tech. and Acta Pharm. Hung. He is a member of the German Pharmacopoeia Commission and chair of the expert group Pharmaceutical Technology. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers and his main research interests are solid dosage forms and pharmaceutical processes like roll compaction/ dry granulation, extrusion and coating.