Dr. Manel Rodríguez Ripoll leads the research area “Wear Reduction Strategies” at AC2T research GmbH, the Austrian Excellence Center for Tribology. His main research focuses on surface engineering for reducing wear in extreme environments. Current topics of research are the design of self-lubricating materials for high temperature and vacuum and surface protection in tribocorrosive environments for oil and gas, offshore and biomedical applications. Rodríguez Ripoll graduated in physics from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and holds a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles (h=32), one book, one book chapter and owns three patents. He has worked as guest lecturer at several universities and serves as evaluator of project proposals for the European Commission.