Sybrand van der Zwaag, distinguished professor, holds a full time position at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands where he leads the group Novel Aerospace Materials. He is member of the Royal Society for Science in the Netherlands, and the fellow of the (British) Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He also holds a position as professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University. He obtained his MSc in 1978 after completing his graduation project at the Dutch Nuclear Research Centre. He then joined the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University (UK) and studied the impact damage in glass and infrared transparent ceramics, and obtained his PhD in 1981. He is director of the Delft Centre for Materials and chairman of the national IOP program on Self Healing Materials, and also the scientific director of the Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI). He was one of the founding fathers of the Netherlands Institute for Metals Research NIMR (now M2i). His research is focused on the development of new materials with outstanding properties. His research focusses on metals, polymers, smart materials and self healing materials. He has published over 500 journal publications and successfully supervised 50 PhD students.