AWARDEES

Tatsuki Ohji is visiting research scientist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, as well as visiting professor at Yokohama National University (YNU) and Nagoya Institute of Technology (NITech), both in Japan. He also serves as technical advisor to the Japan Fine Ceramics Association (JFCA). Prior to retirement, March 2022, he held the position of Fellow of AIST.
BS and MS in mechanical engineering from NITech and Ph. D. in inorganic materials engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ohji has authored more than 350 peer-reviewed papers. His research interests include properties characterization of ceramics, ceramic composites and porous materials and microstructural design of ceramic materials for better performance.
Fellow of The American Ceramic Society (ACerS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), ASM International, and the Ceramic Society of Japan, and Academician of the World Academy of Ceramics, Ohji has received numerous awards including the Distinguished Life member, W. David Kingery Award, John Jeppson Award, Samuel Geijsbeek PACRIM International Award, and ECD Bridge Building Award all from ACerS, Academic Achievement Award from the Ceramic Society of Japan, Chinese Ceramic Society Award from the Chinese Ceramic Society, Bhagat Memorial Lecture Award from the Indian Ceramic Society, Honour Medal of Aurel Stodola from the Slovak Academy of Science, and Lee Hsun Lecture Award from Chinese Academy of Sciences. He served ACerS as a President in 2019-2020.
Ohji is an Honorary Fellow of the European Ceramic Society. 
 

Born in 1952, Ján Dusza is currently full Professor and head of the division of the Institute of materials research and Head of the Research Centre for Advanced Materials and Technologies, PROMATECH, SAS in Slovakia.
He received his master's degree at ELTE University in Budapest, Hungary, in the field of Material Physics in 1976, and Doctor of Science in Physical Metallurgy (1995) and Professor degree in Materials (2004) at the Technical University in Košice, Slovakia. From 1989, he spent several years in the world's leading research Institutes thanks to the Alexander von Humboldt, Liese Meitner, Hertha Filnberg and European Commission scholarships.
His research activities are focused on the development of advanced ceramics, he is especially recognized for his work on the nano/micro/macro mechanical testing and fractography of ceramic – graphene nanocomposites, ultra - high temperature ceramics and high entropy ceramics. He is the author and co-author of more than 250 publications with more than 4000 citations according to SCOPUS (h factor equal to 37). He is co-author of 5 patents and supervised 20 doctoral students.
His work has been recognized many times with a number of prestigious Awards. In 2021 he was awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and ESET Science Award for exceptional individuals of Slovak science. He is Academician of the World Academy of Ceramics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Learned Society of Slovakia.
Jan Dusza is Fellow of the European Ceramic Society. He regularly attends ECerS Conferences and contributes with publications for the Journal of the European Ceramic Society. 
 

Prof. Jesus Gonzalez-Julian holds the chair of Ceramics at RWTH Aachen University (Germany). His research lies on the relation between processing, microstructure and properties of advanced ceramics and refractories. He has focused mostly on MAX phases, developing sustainable synthesis methods and processing different structures for the energy transition. He has also investigated the mechanisms of different novel sintering techniques such as Spark Plasma Sintering, cold sintering and flash sintering.
His career has been connected to the European and national ceramic societies. During his PhD in Spain, he won the student contest at the National Ceramic Conference (SECV), participating in the “European Student Speech Contest” the following year in the ECerS conference in Poland. Afterwards, he started a postdoc position in Germany and applied a JECS Trust to visit Imperial College London (UK) for 6 months. Then, he moved to Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany), where he has organized the symposium about Ceramic Matrix Composites at the National Conference (Deutsche Keramische Gesellschaft, DKG) in 2019 and 2021. Recently (June 2022), he has hosted a FIRE-ECerS Summer school entitled "Eco-Design of Refractories: E for Ecological, Economic, Eco-energetic” at RWTH Aachen.
During this time, he has published 97 peer reviewed articles, including 22 in Journal of the European Ceramic Society, 1 in Open ceramics and 1 in Nature Materials, and has a H-index of 28, 4 patents, PI of 10 national and international projects with > 2.4 Mill. €, and an international experience in Spain, Germany, UK, and Japan. 
 

Dr. Moritz v. Witzleben is Founder and Head of INMATEC Technologies GmbH. INMATEC Technologies GmbH is one of the leading companies worldwide for the production of thermoplastic ceramic feedstock for forming process as ceramic injection moulding and ceramic extrusion.
After obtaining the Ph. D. in Bonn, Germany 1998 he founded the company INMATEC Technologies GmbH.
His development fields are focused on development new organic binder systems for ceramic feedstocks and ceramic feedstocks for multifunctional ceramics, translucent und functional properties. He has lectures at 2 different Universities for Applied Sciences.
Since 2012 he represents the German Ceramic Society (DKG) in the European Ceramic Society and was President of the European Ceramic Society from 2017 to 2019 and Chair of the JECS Trust from 2019 to 2021. He also became Fellow of ECerS in 2021. 
 

Jozef Vleugels obtained a PhD in Applied Biological Science at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of KU Leuven in 1995, and is full professor at the Department of Materials Engineering of KU Leuven teaching courses on advanced ceramics and powder metallurgy. Keywords describing his research are powder metallurgy, processing of ceramics, sintering, spark plasma sintering, additive manufacturing, ceramic composites, nanocomposites, cermets, graded materials, cutting tools, biomaterials, functional ceramics, nuclear materials, microstructural and mechanical properties. He is promoter of 30 completed PhD’s and 14 ongoing PhD’s. His academic bibliography comprises about 480 publications in internationally refereed Journals with a Web of Science h‐index of 53 (63 according to Google Scholar), about 210 international conference contributions, 1 edited book, 16 book chapters and 5 patents.
J. Vleugels is head of the “Surface and interface engineered materials (SIEM)” division of the department of Materials Engineering and coordinating the research group on “Advanced Ceramics and Powder Metallurgy”. He is chair of the Leuven Materials Research Centre (MRC) since November 2021, and member of the steering group of the European Powder Metallurgy Institute (EPMI) of the European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA), the international liaison board of the Plansee Seminar, and the Additive Manufacturing Institute of KU Leuven.
He is member of the Belgian Ceramic Society (BCerS) and was board member of the JECS Trust (2015‐2018). He is editor of the Journal of the European Ceramic Society since 2011 and senior editor since 2020.
 

Dr. Thomas Hérisson de Beauvoir is a CNRS researcher fellow at CIRIMAT lab located at the University of Toulouse 3 ‐ Paul Sabatier (France).
His research deals with the fundamental investigation of ceramic sintering mechanisms, especially in the field of Cold Sintering Processes. He has focused on the use of structural, microstructural and electrochemical characterizations to understand mechano‐ chemical effects involved in sintering processes of electroceramics. He received his PhD in materials chemistry from the University of Bordeaux, France in 2017, developing the use of Spark Plasma Sintering and Hydrothermal Sintering at low temperature to densify metastable materials.
After graduation, he joined the group of Pr. Clive Randall in the Pennsylvania State University (USA) as a Postdoctoral Researcher in 2017 to work on the development of new composites and multi‐ materials using cold sintering and the investigation of sintering fundamentals. Then, in 2019 he joined the group of Dr Claude Estournès at CIRIMAT both developing low temperature sintering and Flash‐Spark Plasma Sintering, to control the thermodynamics/kinetics aspects involved in sintering.
He has been a member of ECerS since his first years as Ph.D. student in ceramics.
 

David started his academic career with a Diploma in Fine Art awarded with distinction from Braunschweig University of Art in 2010, focusing on photography and sculpture. He went on to do a Master of Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art of University College London in 2012, specializing in conceptual art coupled with a material focus. David’s art practice was process‐based, and a change of fields came naturally to him as he went on with a Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science from Technische Universitaet Berlin, finishing in 2015. He went on to join the newly established Direct Track Doctoral Degree for academically outstanding candidates at the Technische Universitaet Berlin. His Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering was awarded summa cum laude in 2021 on the topic: “In situ resource utilization of Martian regolith simulants through wet‐processing for unfired clay structures and sintered ceramics”. Currently, he is a postdoctoral research group leader at TU Berlin, supervising three Ph.D. students with topics revolving around the development of novel Additive Manufacturing materials.
David has had the luck to be awarded several honors, starting with winning the European Competition in Art from the European Council on the German national level with artwork on the “Fortress Europe” in 2003. He subsequently studied fine art and participated in more than ten group and solo exhibitions as an art student. In 2010 he was an artist resident at “Suddenly last summer” Bauchery St. Martin, which was followed in 2012 by the Robert Ross scholarship from the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. After switching fields, his first award in materials science was in 2016 with the Hans‐ Walter‐Hennicke‐Preis for young ceramists from the Deutsche Keramische Gesellschaft (DKG) for extraordinary conference presentations. From 2016‐2019 David received a doctoral studies scholarship from the Evonik Stiftung in Essen. In the Winter of 2022, he spent six months at the Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program and the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering via a postdoctoral scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).
David has co‐authored more than ten peer‐reviewed papers and held around 20 scientific conference presentations, three as an invited keynote speaker. He has co‐edited a special issue on the “Advances in Additive Manufacturing of Ceramics” in Open Ceramics and has worked as a peer‐reviewer for JECS, Open Ceramics, Powder technology, New Space and as a science reviewer for the European Space Agency (ESA). With yCAM, he has led and co‐ organized six scientific conferences and been invited to serve on program committees of two unrelated conferences. David is a member of the Deutsche Keramische Gesellschaft (DKG) and the European Ceramic Society (ECerS), as well as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Currently, David has the honor of serving at the ECerS Europe Makes Ceramics Committee.