Dr.-Ing. Stephan Barcikowski is the new head of the Material and Processing Technologies Department at the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH)  Dr. Barcikowski studied chemistry at the TU Braunschweig (Brunswick) and the Leibniz Universität Hannover before he started working at the LZH. In 2003, he completed his doctorate degree with honors, and in the following years he built up the group "Nanomaterials" at the LZH. Dr. Barcikowski is a founding member of the German Research Foundation (DFG) excellence cluster „From Regenerative Biology to Reconstructive Surgery REBIRTH“ and he is the leader of the special young researcher group "nanoparticles". Furthermore, Dr. Barcikowski was the initiator and head of the program committee of the new conference on the topic „Laser Ablation and Nanoparticle Generation in Liquids“ (ANGEL 2010), that took place for the first time from June 29^th to July 1^st this year in Engelberg, Switzerland. His main fields of interest are the material aspects of laser material processing as well as laser-based generation of nanomaterials.