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Prestigious Doctoral Prizes Once Again go to utg Scientists

In 2022, we were able to really clean up in the doctoral prizes. Three dissertations were awarded prestigious prizes. All three are endowed with € 5,000. On 1 July, the first Day of Engineering and Design #DayEDTUM (formerly Faculty Day), the three prize winners were presented with their awards in a ceremony.

Our award winners in detail:

Dr.-Ing. Philipp Lechner convinced the jury with his dissertation "A Material Model for Foundry Cores - The Brittle Fracture Behaviour of Chemically-Bound Foundry Cores". In his dissertation, Dr Lechner developed a material model that can predict the mechanical behaviour of foundry cores. This model enables mechanical FEM simulations along their process chain. It is parameterised with several novel test setups that determine the fracture strength under multiaxial loading. In addition, a non-destructive method for quantifying the elastic parameters of core materials was developed.

Dr Lechner was awarded the Manfred Hirschvogel Prize for this outstanding achievement. This prize is awarded annually to the best doctorates in mechanical engineering from Germany's nine leading technical universities (T09).

Dr Lechner is continuing his academic career as a post-doc at utg, where he is establishing the new research field of process control.

Dr.-Ing. Jens Stahl's doctorate was on the topic of "Residual stresses induced by shear cutting. In his dissertation, Dr Stahl investigated how residual stresses are introduced during shear cutting, how they can be influenced by process variants and process parameters and how they can be used to increase strength.

For this exceptional achievement, Dr Stahl received the RENK Drive Technology Promotion Award. This prize is awarded for particularly outstanding doctoral theses in the field of drive technology or mechatronics.

Dr Stahl moved to industry on completion of his doctorate and now works as a technical project manager at Hilti Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH.

With Dr.-Ing. Thomas Greß, a second scientist from the research area of foundry engineering was honoured. He impressed with his work on "Vertical Continuous Compound Casting of Copper Aluminium Semi-Finished Products". At utg, he researched the process development for the continuous casting of copper/aluminium semi-finished products.

The impressed jury awarded his excellent research with the WITTENSTEIN prize for the best dissertation.

Dr Greß has also left utg for industry and accepted a new challenge at the medium-sized company PINTER GUSS GmbH in Deggendorf.

Congratulations to all three prize winners!