New DECHEMA President

As of January 1, 2019, Dr. Klaus Schäfer (pictured left), Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Covestro AG, Leverkusen, Germany, is the President of the DECHEMA, Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. He succeeds Dr. Rainer Diercks (pictured right), BASF, Ludwigshafen, Germany. Rainer Diercks has held the position since 2013.

In addition, the General Assembly elected three new members to the DECHEMA Executive Board:

• Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Bersch, Member of the Executive Board of GEA Group AG, Düsseldorf, Germany. He will strengthen the Group of Apparatus and Plant Manufacturers.
• Dr. Michael Grund, Head of Business Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany: He is the new representative in the Chemical Industry/Biotechnology Group.
• Professor Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Marquardt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich and Vice President of the Helmholtz Association. He is the new representative of the Science Group.

Re-elected were:

• Professor Dr. med. Ferdi Schüth, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim and Vice President of the Max Planck Society,
• Dr. med. Christian Bruch, Member of the Executive Board of Linde AG, Munich, Germany, and
• Dr. Ing. Jürgen Stebani, Managing Director of polyMaterials AG, Kaufbeuren, Germany.

The members of the DECHEMA Executive Board are elected for a three-year term and are divided into the groups "Science", "Apparatus and Plant Engineering", and "Chemical Industry/Biotechnology". These represent DECHEMA‘s most important areas.

Klaus Schäfer, born 1962 in Brühl, Germany, studied physics and obtaining his Ph.D. from Cologne University, Germany, in 1989. Before joining the Bayer Group, Leverkusen, Germany, in 2001, he worked for Erdölchemie, Cologne, Germany, and BP, Grangemouth, Scotland. Since 2015, he is a member of the Board of Management of Covestro (formerly Bayer MaterialScience AG) and the company’s Labor Director since mid-2017. Klaus Schäfer is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Covestro and responsible for production and technology as well as all chemical production sites.

• DECHEMA e.V., Frankfurt, Germany