RWTH Researchers Honored by German Materials Society
RWTH researchers receive awards from the German Materials Society DGM.
RWTH researchers Professor Sandra Korte-Kerzel, Professor Guillermo Requena, and Dr. Patrick Köhnen have been honored for their work in the field of materials science by the German Materials Society, DGM for short. The awards are intended to highlight outstanding achievements in the material sciences and materials engineering and to promote excellent early-career researchers.
Professor Sandra Korte-Kerzel, Chair of Materials Physics, received the 2021 DGM Prize for her research in the field of nanomechanics of complex alloys. The prize is awarded for scientific and technical accomplishments that represent a breakthrough in materials science and engineering or have opened up a new field of research.
Korte-Kerzel studied physics and mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen University and received her doctorate from the University of Cambridge. From 2011 to 2013 she was Junior Professor of Micromechanics of Materials at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In 2012, at the age of 32, she was appointed professor of materials physics at RWTH’s Institute of Physical Metallurgy and Metal Physics.
Professor Guillermo Requena, Chair of Metallic Structures and Materials Systems for Aerospace Engineering, was awarded the Tammann Commemorative Medal 2021 for his achievements in the application of the latest tomographic and diffraction methods to metallography. The medal honors research group leaders who have rendered outstanding services to materials science and materials engineering. Requena studied electrical engineering at Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina. He earned his doctorate and completed his habilitation at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). Since 2015, he has also been head of department at the German Aerospace Center.
Dr. Patrick Köhnen from the Chair of Digital Additive Manufacturing received one of the DGM Prizes for Young Talent for his work on alloy development for additive manufacturing. The prize is aimed at doctoral candidates and postgraduates with excellent research achievements. Köhnen studied industrial engineering, specializing in materials and process technology, at RWTH and at Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). As a scholarship recipient, he investigated superconducting ultrahard materials at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2020, Köhnen completed his doctoral thesis entitled "Alloy and process design of additively manufactured bulk and lattice structures of austenitic advanced high-strength steels" at RWTH’s Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy.