Dr Hilpert has 25 years of experience in the synthesis of peptide libraries, their screening, and consequent optimization of peptides. He has published on various subjects with more than 10,000 citations. He trained with world-leading experts including Bob Hancock (antimicrobial peptides), Frank Breitling (high-density peptide libraries) and Jens Schneider-Mergener (peptide libraries on cellulose).Since 2003 Dr Hilpert has investigated the design and optimization of short antimicrobial peptides (9-13mers). He has published on this in high-impact journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Protocols, Biomaterials, and ACS Chemical Biology. Later, he showed that tethered AMPs can be used to protect implants from bacterial infections; his publications (Chem. Biol. and Biomaterials) are stimulating developments that make up a research field on their own.Dr Hilpert works closely with industry and for the last seven years has been a director of a university spin-out company, TiKa Diagnostics Ltd. The company exploits synthetic peptides developed in his laboratory. Dr Hilpert was the first researcher to apply peptide libraries synthesized on cellulose membranes to investigate antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). He and his team have now synthesised and screened more than 10,000 antimicrobial peptides and are now moving the best candidates forward into preclinical development. They have focused on multidrug-resistant bacteria, mainly Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococci, E. coli and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.Dr Hilpert has co-founded and co-organised the International Meeting on Antimicrobial Peptides (IMAP). In addition, he is co-author of the article Alternatives to antibiotics - a pipeline portfolio review. Published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, the article won the Elsevier Atlas Award.