The research group ‘Polymer Separation’ was established in 2007 at Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden (IPF) with a research focus on advanced chromatography, field flow fractionation and scattering techniques for polymer characterization. 

In 2020, Albena Lederer took over the Chair in Analytical Polymer Science of Stellenbosch University (SU) and extended the Polymer Separation Group to an SU-IPF Joint Research Group with strong exchange of scientific knowledge and researcher mobility. 

Today, in the Polymer Separation Group postgraduates, scientists and technicians work on joint research projects combining their expertise on interaction and size exclusion chromatography, field flow fractionation and multiple detection techniques to shine light on structure-property relation of advanced macromolecular systems. A number of novel separation and detection techniques for this purpose have been established during the last 15 years.