Dietmar Geiser received his master’s in business administration from Univer­sity of Mannheim. In 1999, he worked at SCHOTT GLAS as corporate strategy manager and then he became head of business development Asia. Later in 2005, he joined FREUDENBERG as a head of sales & application technology and later as director of Russia. Afterwards Mr. Geiser joined BASF SE in 2008, where he covered several senior functions (marketing, strategy, restructuring, and general mgmt.) for automotive related specialty chemicals and plastics. Currently, he is responsible for the BASF 3D printing materials strategy & plan­ning. He enjoys riesling and is a fishing-junky (carp and catfish).

Russell Barry is the global application technology leader for automotive inte­rior and exterior applications within Dow’s elastomer business. He has been with Dow for 29 years. After obtaining a master’s degree in polymer tech­nology at Aston University, UK, he worked for several British manufacturing companies in rubber and plastics before joining Dow in the polyethylene tech­nical service and development group based in Switzerland in 1987. He has lead application development in a wide range of businesses such as PE, PP, engineering plastics, and foams before his most recent assignments in Dow’s elastomer business. He is author of a number of patents and external publica­tions covering polyolefin technology and polymer foams.

Ferhat Yayman has a BSc degree in chemical engineering at Istanbul Technical University, certificates in quality control, lean production, and ISO 9001&14001 internal auditor. He acts as the production chief, leading all branches of Honda Turkey paint departments: automotive body painting, plastic parts painting and spare parts painting operations. He specialises in automotive body and plastic parts paint quality standards, material change projects, budget man­agement, Kaizen activities and managing new colour approval projects. Dur­ing his 5 year-tenure at Honda, Ferhat led award-winning projects in Honda Europe Engineering Festival in 2015 and Honda EU-AFR-ASIA New Honda Circle in 2013. Ferhat is married and resides in Istanbul. He enjoys travelling, reading, and playing football.

Klaus Bender has a BSc degree in plastics engineering at University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, Germany and a MBA at International University, Geneva, Switzerland. Bender began working as a design engineer at Du Pont in 1988. This was followed by several tasks in application engineering and market de­velopment in Germany and the USA. In 2010, he became the automotive ad­vanced development leader. Since 2015, he has been the automotive applica­tion development leader, Germany and segment leader for structural systems and air management systems.

Christian Hainz is a senior automotive analyst at EY based in Germany. Be­fore this role, he was leading EY’s global automotive analyst team. Christian has over 10 years of experience with strategic projects and analyses in the automotive industry and in total over 15 years of experience in consulting and private equity/M&A. He has extensive experience in international com­mercial due diligence projects including both automotive manufacturers and suppliers. In addition, Christian is well-experienced in business plan valida­tions, strategic market and company analyses, and strategy workshops. He also worked on several thought leadership publications and was speaker and chairman of various automotive conferences.

Marc Kirchhoff finished his study of mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH) in 2006. Afterwards he worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Laser and System Technology (iLAS – TUHH) in the field of welding and cutting. From the year 2009 on, he worked simultaneous at the LZN Laser Zentrum Nord GmbH, a spin-off of the iLAS, as head of makro-department. In 2013, he started working as industry manager automotive at TRUMPF Laser- und Systemtechnik GmbH, responsible for the industry e-mobility and lightweight design. From 2016, he became head of industry and key account management automotive at TRUMPF.

 Prof. Dr. Andreas Hartwig studied chemistry at Cologne University, where he made his diploma thesis and doctoral thesis on reactive polymers for the de­velopment of separation membranes. After that, he stayed at Twente Univer­siteit, The Netherlands for a postdoctoral position. He joined Fraunhofer-IFAM in 1992, as a scientist where is working since then as founder and head of the department ‘Adhesives and Polymer Chemistry’ 1998. He is deputy director of Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials (IFAM) since 2007 and he was also the acting director in 2009-2010. Prof. Dr. Andreas Hartwig is a professor for macromolecular chemistry as well, at University of Bremen, since 2012. His research interests are adhesive bond­ing, adhesives chemistry, adhesion science, fiber reinforced plastics, thermo­setting polymers, supramolecular concepts, nanocomposites and biomimetic materials. The focus is on industry related developments in these fields.

Leman Ozen has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. She has more than 14 years of automotive engineering experience, especially for interiors. She has been working as a project leader responsible for interiors in Tofas/FCA for three years. Before that she had many different roles in Tofas (e.g. IP, panel and console project chief, senior designer) on several projects (Egea, Doblo, Promaster City, Grande Punto, Linea, Fiorino, Albea). Before Tofaş she worked as a plastic injection mould de­sign engineer for three years. She has strong communication skills and has experiences in developing interiors parts, knowledge of manufacturing and processing of plastic parts and project management.

Geoffrey Gendebien has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Liège, Belgium and a certificate of management from the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has more than 15 years of Eu­ropean and North American experience at Owens Corning with a wide array of regional and global roles in manufacturing, supply chain, business and, technical support for Owens Corning’s composites customers; thorough tech­nical and business experience in glass fiber reinforcement for thermoset and thermoplastics. Currently global product manager for the thermoplastics glass range of Owens Corning, he is responsible to define the new product devel­opment objectives, aligned with market needs and, to manage the product line supporting the thermoplastics value chain and coordinating the global footprint to the regional/local needs.

Andrea Mocellin gained a bachelor with honours at the IED in Turin, he later attended the Royal College of Art in London graduating with a master’s degree in vehicle design. His experiences have included working as senior exterior designer at Alfa Romeo/Maserati; as creative designer for Pininfarina, Audi AG, GM forum, Cleto Munari; and as interior designer in London. Various projects he has worked on have been exhibited during the Beijing and Geneve Motor show, Ever in Monaco, MART in Rovereto and the London Transport museum. Since 2014 he joined Granstudio; a mobility design consultancy able to combine a deep automotive design experience with a multi-disciplinary approach to create cars, products and strategies that are successful within their future context.

Semih Ertürk was born in 1977 in Bursa. He graduated from Ege University in 2001 as a chemical engineer. He has been working in the automotive research and development area for 12 years. He is a senior technical specialist for plastic materials at Fiat Chrysler Auto Turkey. He does interior, exterior, under hood and under body plastic material activities for produced cars in Turkey. His competencies include self-pigmented (opaque and metallic) plastic materials, which allow for paint elimination, weight reduction methods (glass bubble filled polymer, chemical and physical foaming process, etc.), and thermoplastic composite materials for metal replacement. He also follows India project activities in plastic materials for FCA. He has a great, young and very passionate team at FCA R&D Turkey. His last proj­ect, the Egea family of automobiles, was named the Best Car of Europe in 2016 by AutoBest.