Mario RUBEN studied Chemistry in Germany and Spain. He obtained his PhD 1998 at the University of Jena, Germany. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the ISIS-ULP in Strasbourg, France, he moved in 2001 to the Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe. His research interests involve the design, synthesis and physical characterization of functional molecule-based systems and their implementation into operational nanosystems. He is the co-ordinator of several European networks (FUN-SMARTs I and II; BIOMACH, MULTIFUN) dealing with molecular nanodevices.