Image: DITF
FRANKFURT, Germany — December 9, 2025 — At the Aachen-Dresden-Denkendorf International Textile Conference held in Aachen at the end of November, Peter D. Dornier, Chairman of the Walter Reiners Foundation of the VDMA, honoured five successful young engineers. Promotion and sustainability prizes were awarded in the categories bachelor/project theses and diploma/master theses. Academic theses that develop solutions for resource-saving products and technologies, for example, are eligible for the sustainability awards.
The Walter Reiners Foundation awarded a sustainability prize worth 3,000 euros in the bachelor’s category to Jasmin Roos. In her thesis, written at RWTH Aachen University, Ms Roos dealt with the development of sustainable solutions in textile recycling. Her approach was to replace non-recyclable elastane with melt-spun yarns.
Raphael Wiederkehr, DITF Denkendorf, received a promotion award worth €3,500 in the master’s category. In his thesis, he evaluated the influence of a carding machine on the quality of mechanically recycled fibres. The aim is to reduce the proportion of yarn and fabric residues and increase the proportion of recycled material in the spinning process. His topic was the automation of the process chain for the production of welded textile hard goods.
Another promotion award, worth €3,500, went to Janne Marie Warnecke, RWTH Aachen University. In her work, she focused on the topic of FEM analysis of stresses and deformations in a fabric during winding in a weaving machine.
A promotion award in the diploma category, worth €3,500, was presented to Lena Fink, TU Dresden. Ms Fink addressed a highly topical challenge: the forming of multiaxial fabrics into profile preforms.
Yuanjing Cai, TU Dresden, was awarded a sustainability prize worth €3,500 in the diploma category. In his work, Mr Cai shows how the production of carbon fibres (CF) can be made more sustainable by substituting the precursors.
Posted: December 9, 2025
Source: VDMA
