The Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) bids farewell to Prof. Dr. Christian Oehr, who passed away unexpectedly on June 29, 2025. He played a decisive role in shaping the fortunes of the Fraunhofer IGB for more than three decades.
Christian Oehr studied chemistry at the Technical University of Clausthal-Zellerfeld and at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where he completed his doctorate in 1987 with the dissertation "Plasma-induced deposition of thin films from some organometallic compounds". Interdisciplinarity and proximity to applications were the factors that led him to the Fraunhofer IGB in Stuttgart in 1989, where he wanted to expand his fledgling plasma activities. After just three years, Oehr took over as head of the Interfacial Process Engineering department in 1992 and successfully developed plasma surface treatment further. He set international standards with his research work on the functional plasma modification of polymers, opened up new applications for plasma technology with plasma cleaning and plasma sterilization and initiated a wide range of industrial developments.
Always open to new ideas and collaborations, even within his own company, he and his colleagues designed chemical interfaces for contact with biological molecules, microorganisms and mammalian cells. In 2015, Christian Oehr was appointed Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer IGB. From 2016 to 2018, he led the Fraunhofer IGB provisionally as Institute Director. Christian Oehr was also a lecturer at the Faculty of Energy, Process and Bioengineering at the University of Stuttgart.
