Olaf Stenzel received his Diplom in Physics in 1986 from Moscow State University and his doctoral degree (Dr. rer. nat.) in 1990 from the Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. In 1999 he earned his Habilitation (Dr. habil.) and, in 2001, joined the Optical Coating Department at the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany. He regularly gives master-level lectures at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena on thin-film optics and the structure of matter. He has authored and co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 5 books.