New director at Leibniz-IWT Bremen, Germany

Prof. Dr. Fechte-Heinen completed his studies of mechanical engineering from 2000 to 2004 with the main focus on materials simulation and mechanics in Bochum, Seville and Berkeley. In 2007, he completed his doctorate at the Ruhr Uni-versity of Bochum on the subject of simulating martensitic phase transfor-mations in shape memory alloys. He then worked part-time on his habilitation, gave his own lectures continuously since 2009, and was appointed as a Privat-dozent at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in 2014 and honorary professor of mate-rials mechanics of phase transformations in solids in 2018.

From 2007 to 2020 Prof. Dr. Fechte-Heinen held various positions at thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG in the materials competency center and in re-search and development. He was responsible among other things for optimiza-tion projects for existing steels and their production systems, the development of innovative functional materials, idea generation and validation, and IP man-agement. Before joining Leibniz-IWT, he was head of product development with a focus on hardened, tempered and multiphase hot-rolled steel products.

IWT has been a stronghold of IFHTSE troughout the existence of our Federation and even before. The foundation dates back to the 40ties, with our German member association AWT being one of the donators. The first director Otto Schaaber initiated the first truly multinational discussion on heat treatment as early as 1955, which subsequently lead to regular international conferences and, to form a responsible body to hold them, the foundation of IFHTSE in 1972. All IWT directors have served as IFHTSE presidents: Otto Schaaber 1975-76, Hans-Peter Mayr, who is also an IFHTSE fellow, 1996-97, and Hans-Werner Zoch 2010-11.

For more than ten years, IWT has pursued an extensive research programme, di-rected by IFHTSE fellow Thomas Lübben, on Distortion Engineering. The re-spective conference series was merged with IFHTSE’s series on Quenching and Control of Distortion, leading to the QDE series with the next event due in April 2021 in Berlin, Germany.

IFHTSE is deeply grateful to Hans-Werner Zoch for his numerous and enduring active contributions to our work, most prominently during his presidency 2010-2011. We congratulate Rainer Fechte-Heinen on his new position and look for-ward to a continuing intense cooperation!