Peter D. Dornier, the member of the Executive Board of the VDMA Textile Machinery Federation and Chairman of the Walter Reiners Foundation for the Promotion of Young Engineers recently honoured five engineers with a total of €17,500 in the award ceremony at the Digital Capability Center (DCC) in Aachen, Germany. Numerous entrepreneurs from the German textile machinery industry also attended the ceremony.

The prize winner in the dissertation category was Dr.- Ing. Benjamin Weise. He is from the Institute of Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen University (ITA) and has dealt with a complex production process for the manufacture of modified multifilament yarns, which offers new perspectives for the development and manufacture of textile charge carriers.

M.Sc. Susanne Fischer, the winner of the Master's thesis category, has systematically and comprehensively solved the challenging task of integrating motion sensors into a finger glove at Reutlingen University.

The 2018 creativity award winners were Mr. Jan Merlin Abram and Mr. Alon Tal from ITA Aachen as well as Mr. Eric Otto from the Institute for Textile Machinery and High-Performance Textile Materials Technology (ITM) in Dresden.

The students Abram and Tal have developed a guideline for the design of hybrid morphing textiles. In addition to the classic functions in conventional and, in particular, composite applications, locally defined, functionally effective joint, torsion, expansion and compression mechanisms can be integrated into the textile.

On the other hand, Otto was awarded for a concept study for the development of a circular knitting machine with a variable diameter needle cylinder, which can lead to further flexibility in the circular knitting process.