Author Archives: Stefan Dirlich

FINEST SAB meets SC

| 27. March 2026
In the meeting on March 20th, the members of the FINEST Scientific Advisory Board were informed on the detailed results of the excellent mid term evaluation FINEST received in 2025. In addtiion, the shortcomings were discussed as well as the recommendations of the auditors to improve the performance of the project. The project is now [...]

DGAW Science Award for Tim Kurtz

| 26. March 2026
Tim Kurtz, FINEST PhD candidate from KIT, received the DGAW Science Award 2026 for the best presentation at the 15th DGAW Scientific Congress at Hochschule Pforzheim (February 24th to 25th, 2026). He presented his doctoral thesis research in a talk titled „Impact of Mineral Additives  on the Pyrolysis of Polystyrene“. Well deserved - many congratulations [...]

PM08 in Leipzig

| 6. March 2026
FINEST is happy to announce that the next project meeitng will take place in Leipzig at UFZ. From May 20th to 22nd the finest colleagues will gather to continue the scientific exchange, and further develop the strategy for the final 15 months of the project. Here's the preliminary and rough agenda for the three days: [...]

FINEST invited to BDE meeting

| 25. February 2026
The FINEST coordination team is glad having received an invitation from Dr. Freya Sternkopf, member of the FINEST SAB,to a regular meeting of BDE's division responsible for hazardous waste. Freya is managing director of the Saxonian Association of the Recycling Industry as well as head of the division of mineral and hazardous waste of the [...]

Successful and great PM07 in Dresden

| 2. December 2025
The FINEST team enjoyed a great meeting in Dresden end of November at the 4TransferLab of TU Bergakademie Freiberg. A big thank-you to the entire team (Anja, Katrin, Stephan, etc.) for hosting us. In addition, one part of the meeitng was dedicated to introduce FINEST into "public encounter" in order to discover possibilities to disseminate [...]

New member of the FINEST SAB

| 6. October 2025
The FINEST team is happy to announce that Dr. Thies Johannson from TU Berlin has accepted the request of the FINEST Steering Committee to join the Scientific Avisory Board of FINEST. New SAB member Thies Johanssen Thies is doing research in the field of Transfer  at the Faculty of Engineering, and received a prize for [...]

FINEST FORUM#1 – Thanks for Participating!

| 13. June 2025
On June 11th, 2025 the FINEST FORUM#1 was held in Forum Adlershof in Berlin. Stakeholder from industry, academia, authorities, associations, politics, etc. are invited to contribute with their perspective on the circular economy. Further information on the agenda etc. can be found at the FORUM's page.

Review paper in Nature Chemical Engineering

| 13. June 2025
Congratulations to the authors Ren Wei, Gert Weber, Lars Blank and Uwe Bornscheu for having published in the high-ranked journal Nature Chemical Engineering. The paper provides a review on biotechnological methods to sustainably recycle or upcycle plastic waste as one of the most challenging crises of today. Recent achievements using biocatalytical and biotechnological methods are [...]