Dr. Helmut Schäfer from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, visited Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter (FJIRSM) at the invitation of the Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials Chemistry and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on January 13th, 2012. While staying at FJIRSM, Dr. Helmut Schäfer delivered a seminar report entitled "Recent Progress in the Synthesis and Investigation of Upconverting Nanocrystals" and carried out detailed discussion with the research staff of FJIRSM.

Helmut Schäfer studied chemistry at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg and received his PhD in 2001 with Prof. M. Weidenbruch for his work on organogermanium compounds. As a postdoctoral fellow, he moved to the Institute of Material Science (IWT) Bremen, German Aerospace Center Cologne, and to the University of Osnabrück. Since 2004 he had been a researcher in the group of Prof. Markus Haase. In 2009 he joined the group of Prof. Martin Steinhart where he is currently a senior scientist. His research interests are closely connected with materials science and include the investigation of alternative synthesis routes to known compounds as well as the synthesis of novel inorganic compounds with particular characteristics.So far Dr. Helmut Schäfer has published many high-quality research papers on top international scholastic periodicals including Adv. Funct. Mater. and Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.