Directorate History of the Process Engineering Department
In 1986, today's Leibniz Institute of Technology was expanded to include the Department of Process Engineering.
Professor Dr.-Ing. Klaus Bauckhage (1986-2006)
In April 1986, Professor Dr.-Ing. Klaus Bauckhage was appointed director of the IWT and head of the main department of materials-oriented plant and process engineering of the then Foundation Institute for Materials Technology (now Leibniz-IWT).
Prof. Bauckhage studied mechanical engineering at the TU Berlin from 1959 to 1966, specialising in process and nuclear engineering. From 1966 to 1968 he worked as a project engineer at Friedrich Uhde GmbH in Dortmund in the Chlorine Division, where he was responsible for the project planning of alkali electrolysis and diaphragm electrolysis plants. From 1968 to 1977, he worked first as a scientific assistant and later as a senior engineer at the Institute for Thermal Process Engineering at the Clausthal University of Technology as a member of Prof. E. Blaß' staff. In 1973, he was awarded a doctorate in engineering with a thesis on segregation in suspension flows at the Clausthal University of Technology.
On 1 November 1977, Prof. Bauckhage was appointed to the Department of Process Engineering at the University of Bremen, where he also received the planning and founding mandate for the Department of Production Engineering.
Under Prof. Bauckhage's leadership, the Process Engineering Department decisively developed the internationally visible field of expertise of spray compacting of metallic materials, which found its expression in the establishment of the DFG's Collaborative Research Centre 372. When it was established in 1994, the SFB Spray Compacting was the first special research area in the engineering sciences at the University of Bremen and the first special research area under the auspices of the IWT.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Lutz Mädler (since 2008)
From 2008, he was followed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Lutz Mädler as Director and Head of the Department of Process Engineering at Leibniz-IWT and Professor of Mechanical Process Engineering in the Department of Production Engineering at the University of Bremen.
Prof. Mädler completed a degree in physics in Zwickau. He then worked as a research assistant at Queen's University of Belfast and at the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Aerosol Research in Hannover. In addition to his doctorate, Prof. Mädler completed a diploma degree in process engineering at the Bergakademie in Freiberg/Sa. in 1999. He then received his doctorate from the Faculty of Process Engineering at the Bergakademie in Freiberg in 1999. Prof. Mädler then researched and taught at the ETH Zurich in the position of senior assistant in the Laboratory for Particle Technologies and taught as a private lecturer. In 2003, Prof. Mädler habilitated at ETH Zurich. After his work at ETH Zurich, Prof. Mädler researched and taught at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Chemical Engineering and at CNSI.
In 2008, Prof. L. Mädler was appointed Director of the Department of Process Engineering at the current Leibniz IWT and Professor of Mechanical Process Engineering at the University of Bremen. Prof. Mädler initiated and was spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1232 "Coloured States". Among others, he was awarded the Dechema Prize, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2017, the Reimar Lüst Award of the Max-Planck-Society (MPI), and an ERC Advanced Grant. Prof. Mädler is also a member of acatech (German Academy of Science and Engineering).
