Reimund Gerhard is a German applied physicist and university professor. Between 1979 and 2006 he used the last name "Gerhard-Multhaupt".
Education
Gerhard graduated from the Technical University of Darmstadt as Diplom-Physiker in 1978 and was a research student with Martin M. Perlman in 1978/79. In 1984, he obtained his Ph.D. with Gerhard M. Sessler at the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Career
From 1985 until 1994, Gerhard was scientist and project manager at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut fuer Nachrichtentechnik Berlin in the department led by Gerhard Mahler. In 1994 and 1996, he was appointed university professor for sensorics and for applied condensed-matter physics, respectively, at the of the University of Potsdam. From 1997 until 2000, Gerhard served as director of the institute of physics and astronomy, from 2006 to 2008 as vice dean, and from 2008 to 2012 as dean of the faculty of science at the university. Between 2004 and 2012, he chaired the joint board of the master-of-science program in polymer science at the four universities with science faculties in Berlin and Potsdam. Since 2014, he has been a member of the university senate in Potsdam. He has undertaken visiting appointments at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, USA, at the Tongji University in Shanghai, China, at the École Normal Supérieure in Cachan, France, at the University of São Paulo in São Carlos, Brazil, at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris, France, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and at the Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, China. Gerhard served as secretary of the 5th IEEE International Symposium on Electrets in Heidelberg, co-chair of the 7th IEEE International Symposium on Electrets in Berlin, chair of the 10th IEEE International Conference on Solid Dielectrics in Potsdam and chair of the 2nd International Conference on Electromechanically Active Polymers in Potsdam. He was the vice president for technical activities of the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society in 2007-2008 and 2014-2015. Since January 2018 he is serving as president of the IEEE Dielectrics & Electrical Insulation Society. His research portfolio includes polymer electrets with quasi-permanent space charge, ferro- or piezoelectrets, ferroelectric polymers with piezo- and pyroelectric properties, polymer composites with novel property combinations, physical mechanisms of dipole orientation and charge storage, electrically deformable dielectric elastomers, as well as the physics of musical instruments.
