Paul W.M. Blom, born in 1965 in The Netherlands, received his Ph. D. Degree in 1992 from the Technical University Eindhoven on picosecond charge carrier dynamics in GaAs. At Philips Research Laboratories he was engaged in the electro-optical properties of polymer light-emitting diodes. From 2000 he held a professorship at the University of Groningen in the field of electrical and optical properties of organic semiconducting devices. In September 2008 he became Scientific Director of the Holst Centre in Eindhoven, where the focus is on foil-based electronics, followed in 2012 by an appointment as director at the MPI for polymer research.