Leibniz Institute for Materials-oriented Technologies - IWT in Bremen
As the first donor of the Leibniz Institute for Materials-Oriented Technologies, IWT-Bremen, AWT supports an internationally renowned research institute with high-quality equipment.
The IWT has been conducting research into highly stressed metallic materials since 1950.
The IWT combines expertise in materials technology, process engineering and manufacturing technology in one institute.
This interdisciplinary cooperation enables the scientists to map and research overarching issues with high practical relevance of highly stressed components along the entire process chain.
Various special research areas, joint industrial research projects, interdisciplinary projects, cooperation with other research institutes (national and international), service sector.
New Director of the Materials Technology Department
Since June 1, 2021, Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Rainer Fechte-Heinen has been Head of the Materials Engineering Department and Managing Director of Leibniz-IWT Bremen and Head of the Official Materials Testing Institute of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (MPA Bremen). He succeeds Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans-Werner Zoch.
Prof. Dr. Fechte-Heinen is 40 years old, married and studied mechanical engineering with a focus on materials simulation and mechanics in Bochum, Seville and Berkeley from 2000 to 2004. In his doctorate, which he completed in 2007 at the Ruhr University Bochum, he dealt with the simulation of martensitic phase transformations in shape memory alloys. He then worked on his habilitation on a part-time basis, has continuously held his own lectures since 2009 and was appointed a private lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum in 2014 and an honorary professor of materials mechanics of phase transformations in solids in 2018.
From 2007 to 2020, Prof. Dr. Fechte-Heinen worked at thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG in various functions in the Materials Competence Center and in research and development. Among other things, he was responsible for optimization projects of existing steels and their manufacturing systems, the development of innovative functional materials, idea generation and validation as well as IP management. Before joining the Leibniz-IWT, he was Head of Product Development with a focus on hardened, tempered and multiphase hot-rolled steel products.
Uniquely in Germany, the IWT unites the three specialist disciplines of materials, process and production engineering as equal-ranking main departments under one roof. Technological problems of metalworking companies can be solved at an interdisciplinary level without time-consuming coordination processes. Located on the campus of the University of Bremen, the IWT's know-how base is further strengthened by its close links with the Department of Production Engineering at the University of Bremen.