Dr. Benoit Merle has been head of the Mechanical Behavior of Materials department since May. His expertise lies in the field of nanomechanical characterization of materials, in particular by means of nanoindentation. He thus contributes to the development of modern thin coatings and complex structured materials. After a Master's degree at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon (France) and a short stint as an engineer at Siemens AG, he completed his doctorate and habilitation at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he headed a Research Group until 2022. He also spent time researching at Texas A&M University. Benoit Merle's scientific contributions have earned him the ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council and the Masing Memorial Prize from the German Society for Materials Science, among others. He has also recently been appointed Principal Editor of the Journal of Materials Rese