Reinhard Schwarz studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and obtained a Ph.D. in High Energy Physics at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. After a postdoc at Princeton University, where he worked on amorphous silicon based solar cells, he started his own research group at the Technical University of Muenchen, Germany. He focussed on new deposition methods and transport studies in amorphous superlattices. He is author or coauthor of some 260 publications in refereed journals and coinventor of a cyclyc chemical vapor deposition method for silicon and carbon based thin films. Currently, he is an associate professor at the Physics Department of Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, with research on wide-band gap semiconductors and lead-free ferroelectrics prepared by pulsed laser deposition.