Hans P. Merkle has been full Professor of Drug Formulation and Delivery at the ETH Zurich since April 1989 until January 2008. Since February 2008 he is Professor emeritus.

Professor Merkle was born in 1943 in Bad Mergentheim, Germany. He studied pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Erlangen and earned his doctorate in 1971 at the ETH Zurich under Professor P. Speiser. He worked as a postdoc from 1972/1973 under Professor William I. Higuchi at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and completed habilitation at the University of Heidelberg in 1979. Previous to his appointment at the ETH Zurich, he was associate professor of pharmaceutical technology at the University of Bonn from 1983/1988 and full professor of pharmaceutical technology at the University of Frankfurt from 1988/1989. He was chairman of the Department of Pharmacy at the ETH Zurich from 1991/1994. From 1992/2000 he was a member of the planning commission at the ETH Zurich, and he served as vice-president of this commission.

The research of his group focused on the (i) delivery of therapeutics through biological barriers, (ii) preformulation of therapeutic peptides and proteins, (ii) particulate vaccine delivery systems, and (iv) the delivery of growth factors in tissue engineering. He served on the boards of several scientific journals, and is Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists AAPS, and a Member of the Swiss Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences SAPhS.