The Walter Reiners-Stiftung (Foundation) of the German Textile Machinery Industry has honoured four successful junior engineers in Aachen.

Laureates of 2009

Foundation’s President and Chairman of the Board of Lindauer Dornier GmbH, Peter D. Dornier, honoured the laureates during a celebration in the new building of the Institute for Textile Technology of the Aachen University (RWTH Aachen). The promotion prize endowed with 5,000 Euros in the category dissertation has been awarded to Dr. Gunnar Seide of RWTH Aachen. In the category diploma / master two theses stood out among numerous other candidatures. Therefore, the board of directors of the foundation has been glad to bestow two promotion prizes of 3,000 Euros each: one for the diploma thesis of Wolfram Kretzschmar of Dresden University and the other for the master thesis of Christoph Rieger at Reutlingen University / ITV Denkendorf. The creativity award for the cleverest seminar paper – endowed with 2,000 Euros – was given to Ms Helga Krieger of RWTH Aachen.

Textile competence of strategic importance

In his celebratory speech, Peter D. Dornier outlined how the image of textiles is changing: While textiles were synonymous to clothing in former times, technical textiles made of fibre composites and their application in the automotive, aviation, space and environmental industry characterize the image of today and in the future. “Technical textiles of today fulfil the original function of textiles by protecting people from harmful environmental impacts. Life-saving airbags in vehicles, high-strength fuselages of aircrafts or bodies of racing cars made of carbon fibres as well as geotextiles in flood protections dams are examples for this new textile reality, which is of strategic importance for our country”, said Dornier.

Pooling strength

“Maintaining Germany’s competitiveness in the field of composites calls for research institutes to act in concert and to make practicable results available to the industry”, continued Peter D. Dornier.

Conferences are ideal platforms for the interchange between science and industry. In view of the excessive offer of textile conferences in Germany Dornier invited to pool strengths in order to establish a conference of international rank. “For the textile conferences the same applies what we as industry request for the fragmented exhibition landscape: Less is more! The fusion of the Aachen and Dresden sessions can only be the first step on this way”, said Dornier.

Courtesy: VDMA
Textile Machinery Association,Lyoner Str.
18, 60528 Frankfurt ,
Germany.