Prof. Dr. Andreas Gerdes studied chemistry at Clausthal University of Technology from 1983 to 1990. From 1990 to 2001, he headed the construction chemistry laboratory at the Institute for Building Materials, Materials Chemistry and Corrosion at ETH Zurich. In November 2001, he became head of the "Chemistry of Mineral Interfaces" department at the Institute for Functional Interfaces at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Since October 2002, he has been Professor of Construction Chemistry (now W3) at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences - Technology and Economics. He is also co-founder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of IONYS AG (2008), a spin-off of KIT and Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences. Since 2016, he has been Scientific Director of the KIT Innovation Hub "Prevention in Construction", a Helmholtz Innovation Lab.

His current areas of focus include prevention in construction, surface protection systems, durability of cementitious materials and sustainable infrastructure.