At this year's HärtereiKongress (HK) in Cologne, which is organized annually by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Wärmebehandlung und Werkstofftechnik e. V. (Working Group for Heat Treatment and Materials Technology) and was held in 2022 for the first time since 2019, the Paul Rubensahm Award was announced on the last day of the trade fair and congress. Dr.-Ing. Nicole Mensching, a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Materials Oriented Technologies - IWT, was delighted to receive the award for the best presentation from the ranks of young scientists.

Dr. Mensching (née Wielki) recently completed her dissertation at the University of Bremen with great success and works at the Leibniz IWT as a research associate in the main department of production technology, where she deals with processes for mechanical surface treatment, among other things. With her presentation on "Particle-oriented abrasive blasting as a novel approach for high-throughput characterization of metallic materials," she convinced the five-member jury from various disciplines at the Cologne congress both in terms of content and rhetoric: "Ms. Mensching managed to convince the jury of her ability to develop new scientific approaches in the field of materials testing with high application potential through her analytical results as well as her competent presentation," the laudation stated.

 The prestigious Paul Riebensahm Award is endowed with 2,000 euros and will be presented at the Hardening Congress the following year.