Since the beginning of January 2024, the DECHEMA Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology has a newly elected Executive Board. Six new members were unanimously elected to the Board at the General Assembly in November 2023. The term of office of each board member is three years. The members are organised into the groups “Apparatus and Plant Engineering”, “Science” and “Chemical Industry/Biotechnology” to represent the most important areas of DECHEMA.
Thorsten Dreier has been Covestro's Chief Technology Officer since July 2023 and is responsible for the corporate functions Process Technology, Engineering, Group Health, Safety & Environment and Group Procurement. He began his professional career in 2002 as a laboratory manager in the Bayer Group. He subsequently held various management positions at Bayer, Bayer MaterialScience and Bayer Technology Services. With the spin-off of Covestro, Dreier took over the global management of Production & Technology in the Coatings, Adhesives & Specialties business unit and later the Specialty Films and Thermoplastic Polyurethanes business units. He studied chemistry and received his doctorate from the University of Münster in 2001.
Silke Gotthardt heads the “Process & Technology Development” department of Bayer's Enabling Function Engineering & Technology. This function provides the three Bayer divisions Pharma, Crop Science and Consumer Health with cross-disciplinary scientific support and the technical infrastructure to drive innovative technologies for Bayer and solve challenging problems in the life sciences. Gotthardt holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Erlangen. She began her professional career as an industry doctoral student in pharmaceutical development and project manager at Goedecke (Warner Lambert/Parke Davis Group). She then worked for Boehringer Ingelheim, where she held various local and global positions before joining Bayer.
Thomas Hirth has been Vice President at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology since 2016. After completing his doctorate at the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Karlsruhe, he held various positions at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Most recently, he worked as Head of Environmental Engineering at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Pfinztal. In December 2007, he took over the management of the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart. From 2012 to 2015, Hirth was spokesman for the Group for Life Sciences and a member of the Executive Board of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. From April 2008, he also held a professorship at the University of Stuttgart and was head of the Institute of Interfacial Engineering and Plasma Technology IGVP at the University of Stuttgart. From 2012 to 2015, Hirth was Vice Dean of Faculty 4 Energy, Process and Bioengineering at the University of Stuttgart.
Christoph Kowitz is Senior Vice President Research & Development at Wacker Chemie, Munich / Burghausen. From 2013 to 2018, he was Vice President of the Performance Silicones business unit. Before joining Wacker Chemie, he was Managing Director at Pulcra / Fashion Chemicals Group (formerly Cognis), based in Düsseldorf and Geretsried, from 2009 to 2012. Prior to that, he was Head of Corporate Development / M&A at Cognis in Düsseldorf from 2002 to 2008. After studying chemistry and completing his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, he began his professional career as Head of Research for biodegradable polymers at BASF. He later worked as a project manager at McKinsey in Frankfurt, Manila and the Philippines.
Doris Segets has held a professorship for Process Engineering of Electrochemical Functional Materials at the University of Duisburg-Essen since December 2018. She has also been a private lecturer in mechanical process engineering since July 2020. Segets studied chemical and bioengineering at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). After completing her doctorate, she headed the Nanoparticle Processing Group at the Chair of Solids and Interfacial Process Engineering at FAU from 2013 to 2018. From 2015 to 2018, she was also Managing Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Functional Particle Systems at FAU and a member of the Erlangen Cluster of Excellence “Engineering of Advanced Materials”.
Jürgen Stebani is co-founder and co-owner of Polymaterials, which was founded in Kaufbeuren in 1999. As its CEO, he is also a member of the board of Plastics Europe Deutschland and the DIHK Committee for Industry and Research. Stebani studied chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, where he gained his doctorate in 1993, specialising in polymer chemistry. He then worked for Bayer in the Plastics Division. He held various management positions in the Polycarbonates Division, Strategic Planning / GF Controlling. He was also a member of the LPDE Petroleum Chemicals plant management team in Dormagen.
Axel Kobus, Evonik Operations, Hanau; Walter Leitner, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, Mülheim; and Jürgen Nowicki, Linde, Pullach, were re-elected. Eva-Maria Maus, Hamilton Bonaduz, Bonaduz/CH; and Andreas Hoff, Evonik Technology & Infrastructure, Hanau, were re-elected as auditors and guests of the Executive Board.
