Professor Alois K. Schlarb currently serves as Senior Research Professor at the Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität (RPTU), is a member of the State Research Center OPTIMAS at RPTU and a visiting professor at Qingdao University of Science and Technology (QUST), PR China. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Kaiserslautern, specializing in production engineering and company organization.

After his graduation in 1984 he relocated to the University of Kassel, working as scientific assistant to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. e.h. Ehrenstein. He was awarded a doctorate in 1989 for his thesis on polymer processing. From 1988 until 1989 he was also head engineer at the university’s Institut fuer Werkstofftechnik. In the following 13 years Professor Schlarb held different positions in the industry, e.g. the polymer laboratory of BASF SE as material scientist and project manager researching composites, last as Vice President and head of marketing, research and development with B. Braun Medical AG, Emmenbrücke, Switzerland. In November 2002 Alois Schlarb was appointed to a full professorship for "Composite Materials" at the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern (now RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau) and held this position until March 31, 2022. From 2003 - 2008, he was also head of the Institut für Verbundwerkstoffe GmbH, Kaiserslautern, from 2003 - 2015 president of SAMPE Deutschland e.V., from 2009 - 2015 spokesman of the Scientific Alliance of Plastics Technology (WAK) and from 2018 - 2024 visiting professor at Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, PR China.

He is on the editorial board or scientific advisory board of several journals and has more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is also the editor/author/co-author of several books and book chapters.

The focus of his research activities is on process-structure-property-relations and tribology of polymer based hybrid materials.