Product design is the formation, formulation, handling, manufacturing, and characterization of complex multiphase products with specific properties. The applications define the required product properties, which cover both classical fields of process technology in the chemical industry as well as new emerging fields of electronics, energy and environmental technologies, life sciences, materials science and engineering, nanotechnology, and photonic technologies. In view of the broad relevance of particle science and technology, the challenge is how to prepare students to tackle the grand challenges in particle science and technology in academia and industry.
Our answer is to introduce fundamental unifying principles, which are widely applicable to many different kinds of products including solid, liquid, and even gaseous particles and which are required to understand, design and apply particle systems in various applications. These principles are related to the formation and formulation of particulate systems along the five dimensions of size, shape, surface, morphology and composition.

Prof. Wolfgang Peukert has led the Institute of Particle Technology at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg since 2003. His research focuses on particle technology including the molecular understanding of particle surfaces and interfaces and methods of particle production and processing investigated in hierarchically structured approaches. In addition to molecular simulation (DFT, MD) continuity approaches (FEM, CFD) as well as particle-based methods (population balances) are used. He established a number of highly visible interdisciplinary consortia with particle technology playing a central role, including the Research Training Group in Disperse Systems for Printed Electronics, the Cluster of Excellence Engineering of Advanced Materials and the Collaborative Research Center 1411 Design of Particulate Products.