The award “A life for thin film” particularly honors experts in the field of film and surface technology, who have dedicated their careers to interaction between research, life and art. Before Prof. Andreas Leson, Prof. Wolfgang Diehl, Prof. Angus Macleod und Prof. Hans Pulker were presented with this same prize. The symposium, organized by the Romana Film Sottili, takes place every two years and offers an international platform for experts in the field of vacuum coating technologies.

Prof. Andreas Leson graduated from the University Münster with a diploma in physics and received a Ph.D in experimental physics with research into magnetism. Since 1997 Prof. Andreas Leson has been Deputy Director and head of the department PVD- and Nanotechnology at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Werkstoff- und Strahltechnik IWS Dresden. In 2011 he was appointed as an honorary professor at the Technischen Universität Dresden.

Prof. Leson has been researching in the field of thin films and nanotechnology for many years. In particular, he focusses his studies in coating procedures of EUV optics as well as in the development of reactive multilayers for particular applications in the field of joining technologies. Furthermore he concentrates his work in the fabrication of super hard amorphous carbon coatings.