Institute of Technology, Resource and Energy-efficient Engineering (TREE)
TREE Retreat 2022 - Time of Research-Synergy
This year - the ninth retreat since TREE was founded - the institute's management was pleased to welcome the International Center for Sustainable Development (IZNE) and the Center for Ethics and Responsibility (ZEV) as guests. Right at the welcome, a first, short act under the motto "Together we grow" was to transport the spirit of the conference. The participants had the task of putting together an oversized jigsaw puzzle.
A special "warm welcome" was extended to the newly appointed professorial TREE members and researchers, Professors Anna-Lena Menn, Mandy Gieler, Sebastian Houben and Marc Williams, as well as the new Vice President for Research and Young Scientists Prof. Remi Maier-Rigaud.
To everyone's delight, even Vice President Prof. Jürgen Bode found the time and leisure to be present this year.
In a round of introductions, the new appointees gave a brief outline of their vita. The newly elected Vice-President Prof. Remi Maier-Rigaud gladly followed with his personal introduction.
Prof. Steffen Witzleben and Prof. Dirk Reith then opened the substantive part of the retreat with a report on the past year at the institute. With manifold efforts around the core topic "sustainability", a lot was achieved and implemented in the last cycle.
For example, there was news to report about the important topics:
- TREE colleagues in the PK NRW.
- The completed TREE strategy
- TREE's participation in the university sustainability strategy in almost all dimensions
- Project applications (here also especially mentioned a special profile building application with the Institute ISF)
- The transfer contacts to politics (among others in the project GARRULUS)
- "Taking off" on topics of hydrogen and power electronics
- Achieved surplus investments
- The research colloquium series (of FB EMT and TREE) and various technical events
In addition, reports on the visualization of the key visual, the advisory board meeting 2022 with high praise or the design of a TREE showroom were just as well received and noticed.
This was followed by the first keynote of the day. In a joint presentation, the IZNE directors Prof. Witrud Terlau, Prof. Katja Bender and Prof. Martin Hamer gave a detailed insight into their research institution, organizational structure and working methods, but above all into the thematic focus and projects of the IZNE. With the different core topics, the directors passed the baton to each other.
After the presentation of the IZNE goals, there was then an open discussion on how to find interesting starting points and the hoped-for content overlap for future cooperation.
In an exciting second impulse lecture, Prof. Klaus Lehmann, in his function as managing director of ZEV, presented the close connections between ethics, responsibility and research and opened with his remarks on the topic:
"Ethics as a topic in scientific-technical education" a lot of space for the selected aspects and considerations of ZEV. After the lecture, the participants went on a joint search for connecting areas to TREE.
The second day of the retreat belonged, as usual, to the TREE doctoral students and was devoted almost exclusively to their topics, various workshops with research field relevance and the well-known poster session with awards for the best posters.
With a preceding informative short impulse by Prof. Susanne Keil "Diversity und Gender in der Kommunikation von Technik- und Wissenschaftsthemen" gender2technik.de, the TREE PhD students then kicked off the poster session with their poster pitch presentations. During the open poster session an internal jury consisting of the newly appointed professors Menn, Williams and Houben evaluated the posters.
This year the following PhD/Master students received the awards as follows:
1st place Roman Grimmig (PhD student with Prof. Witzleben, Department 05).
2nd place Dominik Wilde (PhD student with Prof. Reith, department 03)
and the
3rd place was shared by Michael Bareev-Rudy and Steffen Schedler (PhD student and Master's student, respectively, with Prof.in Clees, Department 03).
The wrap-up session rounded off the day.
The TREE Institute would like to thank the numerous internal and external participants for this successful retreat and is already looking forward to the tenth anniversary next year.
