Claus G. Rebholz holds his Diploma in Materials and Surface Engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Furtwangen/Germany (1993), his M.Sc. (1995) and his Ph.D. from the University of Hull/UK (2000). During his graduate studies he received a DAAD-German Academic Exchange Scholarship for his M.Sc. and was employed as a Research Assistant working towards his Ph.D.

He worked as a R&D Executive Management Trainee in the field of Advanced Materials and Surface Engineering at the Robert Bosch GmbH in several research centres in Germany, Japan and the US (1998-2001), before establishing and leading a multidisciplinary Research Profit Centre in the area of Laser Materials Processing in Stuttgart/Germany (2001-2004). During his time at Robert Bosch he carried out and managed research projects in materials/surface engineering and laser materials processing, focusing not only on basic research, but also on application-specific process development, consulting, and support of product development and manufacturing within the divisions and plants world-wide. He also has extensive international experience through research collaborations with a number of universities and research institutes in Europe and the USA.

His research interests and contributions are in Materials and Surface Engineering, especially in the development of nano-composite/structured hard and wear-resistant thin films, produced by various vacuum coating and surface modification techniques. His present research is focused on (i) the development, deposition and evaluation of nanostructured coatings within different material systems and (ii) the fundamental understanding for describing the relationship between deposition parameters, chemical composition, structure, physical, mechanical and tribological properties of thin films/coatings.