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Feb 20, 2025

YCN Newsletter 25 - 99th Annual Conference “Ceramics” of the DKG from a participant's point of view - Leonhard Gertlowski

On 9 September 2024, I had the privilege of participating in the Hans-Walter Hennicke Lecture Competition as part of CERAMICS 2024, held in Höhr-Grenzhausen at the WesterWaldCampus of the Koblenz University of Applied Science. The region around Koblenz was not entirely foreign to me, as my two older siblings were born in nearby Lahnstein. I still remember going to the Deutsches Eck and the fortress Ehrenbreitstein when I was a child. The fortress was the place where the conference dinner and award ceremony later took place.

DKG - Leonhard Gertlowski  During my presentation on the field-assisted sintering of MAX phase composites, I had the opportunity to present some of the results of my Master's thesis, which I completed at the Institute for Materials Applications in Mechanical Engineering (RWTH Aachen University) in June 2023. Since the beginning of 2024, I have been employed as a PhD student at the Institute for Materials Applications in Mechanical Engineering. In front of a large audience of professors, scientists, industry representatives and students from the Benelux countries, I gave a 12-minute talk followed by a discussion. Despite experiencing a certain degree of nervousness, I was able to deliver my presentation with confidence and was gratified by the positive feedback I received following my talk. The next day I was awarded first place in the Hans-Walter Hennicke Lecture Competition. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the head of our institute, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christoph Broeckmann, and the supervisor of my Master's thesis, Dr.-Ing. Simone Herzog, who last won the Hans-Walter Hennicke Lecture Competition for our institute in 2012. In addition to the great honour of winning the lecture competition, I was delighted to receive prize money of 1500 euros. I will always remember the Hans-Walter Hennicke Lecture Competition. It taught me that hard work pays off.

Finally, I would like to announce that I will represent Germany in the Student Speech Contest at the Conference of the European Ceramic Society this year in Dresden. I hope to impress the jury as I did in the Hans-Walter Hennicke Lecture Competition.

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