The Annual Meeting, held on 16 and 17 November at Bergen op Zoom, was a great success. Around 220 members of the DPI community attended the meeting that was hosted by Sabic. The theme of these days was ‘Creating Value'. With this theme we focused on the value that our community members have for each other. As well as in knowledge as in the ability to transfer knowledge into product and process innovation. There were several speakers throughout the day, all of whom shared their vision on the theme of this year's meeting.
The first speaker of the day was the vice president technology of Sabic IP. Tom Stanley provided a very clear presentation about the current activities of Sabic Innovative Plastics. There was special attention for the LEXAN range and also for the sustainability solutions of the company.
The managing director of DPI, Jacques Joosten, gave an update of the highlights within the institute. Some highlights of this year are the five new industrial partners, the start of a new fellowship programme with DPI Fellow Katja Loos and the implementation of the updated strategy of DPI.
DPI Fellow Katja Loos gave us her vision at Enzymatic Polymerisations as new possibilities for new polymer systems and showed us how to create value by creating fundamental knowledge.
Brigitte Voit also creates value by creating fundamental knowledge. She gave us more insights in the use of dendritic glycopolymers in biomedicine and nanotechnology.
Inge van der Meulen focused on a biodegradable material with the ability to restore damaged nerves during her PhD. In the process she got help from Ron Deumens and together they presented the results of the research which led to the new innovative material.
In the afternoon session there were three speakers who gave us their opinion on the theme ‘From fundamental knowledge to product and process innovation'. Carlos Härtel form GE, Jonq-Min Liu from ITRI Taiwan and Jacques Joosten from DPI all presented a short lecture which was followed by a discussion upon the theme with the audience.
During the evening session we granted the prizes for the best posters. This was again a difficult task for the jury but they managed to make a selection. The third prize was granted to Jing Wu, the second prize to Nicole Franssen and the first prize to Abhijit Saha.
We were also pleased that we could grant 23 Certificates of Invention to 15 researchers. These researchers filed patent applications in the academic year 2009-2010.
More information on the different presentations and pictures from the day can be found on the intranet.