Portrait of Professor Stommel
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Markus Stommel has held the Chair of Polymer Materials at since March 2020 and also heads the Institute of the same name at the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden e.V. He was born in Aachen in 1968.
Without plastics technology... our future is unimaginable, because the use of plastics enables solutions that offer convincing technical, economic and, in particular, ecological performance. For example, our mobility would not be possible in its current form without plastics. Almost nobody would be able to afford and drive a car without plastics.
Being a professor ... offers the opportunity to convey one's own enthusiasm for technology to young people and to encourage them to think further about the knowledge they have learned, so that new knowledge is generated in turn.
Students ... should not only be able to repeat the material they have learned, but also to critically examine it and network it across disciplines.
In the future . .. plastics will assert their place in technology, as we will not be able to solve the technical challenges of the future without plastics. Lightweight construction and energy efficiency, for example, can only be achieved with plastics. Plastics are also the only material that we have an unlimited supply of, as we can produce them from many sources, such as biological resources.
If I could study again ... I would give computer science much more space, as it will have an even broader position in technology than it already has today.
Excellence... is the obligation, but also the incentive, to constantly work on yourself and want to progress.