Prof. Dr. Karl Kirchner (born 1960 in Wiener Neustadt) received his diploma (1984) and doctorate (1987) from the TU Wien under the supervision of Prof. Roland Schmid. After a two-year PostDoc stay at Washington State University with Prof. John P. Hunt and another PostDoc year with Nobel Prize winner Henry Taube at Stanford University, he returned to the TU Wien, where he received his habilitation in "Organic Metal Chemistry" in 1994. He is currently Professor of Organometallic Chemistry and Head of the Institute for Applied Synthetic Chemistry.

In research, Prof. Kirchner focuses on the topics of ligand design, synthesis of defined base transition metal complexes and their application in homogeneous catalysis. He is the author of over 280 publications in peer-reviewed journals (h index 51).