Frederic Laquai graduated with a diploma in Chemistry from the University of Marburg, Germany in 2003 and received a doctoral degree in Physical Chemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPIP) and the University of Mainz in 2006. Afterwards, he spent two years as a Research Fellow in the group of Professor Sir Richard Friend at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (UK), where he studied ultrafast energy and charge transfer processes in organic semiconductors. In 2008 he returned to the MPIP in Mainz and led the Organic Optoelectronics group until he became 'Associate Professor of Material Science and Engineering' at KAUST in early 2015.  His group studies the photo physical processes that limit the efficiency of photovoltaic devices including organic, inorganic, perovskite, and hybrid PV materials by employing various steady-state and time-resolved optical and electro-optical spectroscopy techniques.