TREE Retreat 2023 - 10 Years of Networking, Research and Teaching

The retreat provided an important platform for the exchange of ideas, research results and future project plans - as well as for networking between the research groups. Under the motto "10 years of TREE - review, institute development and future milestones", the focus was on topics such as research field development, newcomer success stories and the compatibility of research and teaching.

10 Years of the Institute for Technology, Resource and Energy-efficient Engineering

Prof. Dr. Dirk Reith and Prof. Dr. Steffen Witzleben opened the closed meeting with a review of 10 years of TREE and the past year at the institute. Over the past 10 years, TREE has grown significantly to more than 30 professors and 50 research assistants. In addition, networking and cooperation with industry and local authorities as well as within the university with HBRS research institutions was further expanded in 2022/2023. There have also been some changes at an operational level over the past year: Prof. Dr. Corinna Thomser succeeded Prof. Dr. Christian Dresbach as Head of the Materials and Processes research field and Fabian Tenk succeeded Martin Schenk as TREE Managing Director for the Sankt Augustin site.

Inspiring keynote speeches

This was followed by the first keynote speeches of the day entitled "Developing transfer projects together" by Vice President for Transfer, Innovation and Sustainability Prof. Dr. Michaela Wirtz and the Head of the Center for Science and Technology Transfer. This was followed by a lively discussion on a common understanding of transfer successes and innovation ecosystems. Once again, it became clear that the greatest need for support is in the area of research funding, followed by networking. A lack of resources and capacities as well as a lack of funding structure were named as the biggest hurdles for transfer projects.

In further exciting keynote speeches, Dr. Jessica Rumpf presented her doctoral project and her research at the Chair of Renewable Resources at the University of Bonn. Daniel Grotenburg then presented his industrial doctorate and his work at the Rikutec Group (Altenkirchen).

TREE PhD poster session

The second day of the TREE conference started with the poster pitch presentations by the doctoral students. After the subsequent poster session, a jury of professors awarded cash prizes to the three best contributions on current doctoral theses.

Philipp Gillemot, a doctoral student in Applied Natural Sciences under Prof. Dr. Steffen Witzleben, received the first prize of €200. The second prize of €150 went to Cassandra Moers, also a doctoral student in Applied Natural Sciences. Daniel Grotenburg, doctoral student of Prof. Dr. Dirk Reith and Prof. Dr. Olaf Bruch, took third place and received the poster prize of €100.

Further development of the TREE research fields

After keynote speeches by professors Anna-Lena Menn, Marc Williams and Sebastian Houben, the group work began on the further development of the TREE research fields of energy, modeling and simulation, materials and processes as well as technology transfer and acceptance. This enabled the working groups to discuss pressing challenges and new ideas for the further development of the research fields. The subsequent wrap-up session rounded off the 10th TREE conference.

The TREE Institute would like to thank the numerous internal and external participants for this successful conference.