Samet Varol received his MSc from Ulm University, Germany, carrying out his thesis work at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPIP-Mainz) in the group of Prof. Katharina Landfester. In 2012, he joined the Molecular Spectroscopy Department at MPIP-Mainz for his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Mischa Bonn and Prof. Sapun Parekh, followed by a short postdoctoral period in the same department.

Between 2018 and 2020, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Zurich in the group of Prof. Stefan Seeger. Afterward, he joined the group of Prof. Annette Andrieu-Brunsen at TU Darmstadt as a postdoctoral researcher and later continued his independent research there as a Career Bridging Fellow.

From 2023 to 2025, he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, which he carried out at the University of Bologna, Department of Chemistry (host: Prof. Damiano Genovese), and at the University of Milan, De Cola Labs (host: Prof. Luisa De Cola), focusing on the development of mechano-responsive smart-gating membranes to control transport through nanopores. Since May 2026, he has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in the De Cola Group at the University of Milan.

Research interests: nanoporous materials, nanoconfined transport, responsive polymers, functional interfaces, and spectroscopic, photophysical, and microscopic investigation of materials.