Ekkard Brinksmeier is one of the top international researchers in the field of production engineering. For more than 45 years, he has been active in the field of material-oriented and resource-conserving production processes with a special focus on high precision engineering, amongst other areas. His long and successful research career is coming to an end and Brinksmeier is entering retirement. On October 29, 2019, he was honored for his outstanding achievements at a farewell colloquium in Bremen.
Ekkard Brinksmeier was a professor of production processes at the University of Bremen and director of the main department of production engineering at the Leibniz Institute for Materials Engineering (IWT). Moreover, he was the head of the Laboratory for Precision Machining (LFM). One of the areas of focus of his research was ultra-precise, mechanical production processes, including diamond machining processes and precision grinding.
First Bremen Recipient of Leibniz prize
After his mechanical engineering degree at the University of Hanover, where he received his PhD in 1982 and habilitated in 1991, the production engineer accepted an appointment at the University of Bremen in 1992. In 1997, he was the first Bremen scientist to be appointed a member of the DFG (German Research Foundation) Senate Committee on Collaborative research Centres, prior to receiving the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize – the most important research funding prize in Germany – from the DFG in 1999.
Professor Brinksmeier is a member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), a past president of the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP), and the European Society for Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology (euspen). In 2011, he received the Frederick W. Taylor Research Medal from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and in 2015 the euspen Lifetime Achievement Award. The RWTH Aachen University presented him with an honorary doctorate title in 2012. More recently in 2017, Mr. Brinksmeier was awarded an honorary professorship for his outstanding scientific achievement and the cooperation with the Chinese University of Tianjin.
