Persons
March 2007
Part of Volume 1		 Editor
H. Foell

Coming In

Prof. Dr. Eckhard Quandt

   Prof. Dr. E. Quandt
From 2000 to 2006 he was a member of the "Faculty of Mechanical Engineering" at the University of Karlsruhe. Since December 2006 Eckhard Quandt is a full professor and holds the Chair for Inorganic Functional Materials within the Institute for Materials Science at the Faculty of Engineering.
Eckhard Quandt received his diploma in physics and his Dr.-Ing. at the Technical University Berlin in 1986 and 1990, respectively, working on solid state physics and electron microscopy. Since 1991 he has worked on thin film smart materials and their applications at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (1991-1999) and at the Stiftung caesar (1999-2006). For his research and development on this field he was awarded the "Georg-Sachs-Preis 1995" of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde (DGM). He has arranged and successfully carried out European projects as well as national joined research projects with scientific and industrial partners on different applications.
  From his Homepage

Going Out

Prof. Dr. Werner Weppner

   Prof. Werner Weppner
  • 1976 - 1977 Visiting Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
  • 1978 - 1981 Member of the International Expert Committee for the evaluation of test programs of environmental chemicals of the OECD.
  • 1985 Venia Legendi in the Chemistry Department of Stuttgart University. Privatdozent for Chemistry at Stuttgart University.
  • 1986-1993 C3-Professor (Associate Professor) at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart.
  • 1993-2006 C4-Professor (Full Professor) and Chairholder, Chair for Sensors and Solid-State Ionics, Faculty of Engineering, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany
We certainly will miss him, and hope that he enjoys all the new freedom retirement provides.
All of you know Prof. Weppner from at least one of the many lectures he offered or as advisor for plenty of master / diploma / or PhD theses. In September 2006 he reached the magical age of 65, at which the university will retire you, no exceptions granted.
With him, we also lose to some extent "Ionics", his area of research (and excellence). But only to some extent, because Ionics is alive and well, although not always was easily visible, in many projects at the TF and the Materials Science Institute. Why we decided to switch from "Ionics" to "Inorganic Functional Materials" is a long and complex story, some information is given below.
Here is his Curriculum Vitae:
  • 9.09.1941 born in Mainz, Germany
  • 1961 - 1968 Studies of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, Diploma in Physics, Diploma work at the Max-Planck-Institut for Chemistry, Mainz, in Mass Spectroscopy and Cosmology.
  • 1969 - 1973 Ph.D. work and teaching at Dortmund University, Chemistry Department, in Solid State Electrochemistry.
  • 1969 - 1975 Research Assistant and Lecturer, Chemistry Department, Dortmund University, W. Germany.
  • 1975 - 1976 NATO scholar, Center for Materials Research, Stanford University, Stanford, California, U A.
 

A Bit of Gossip about the Hiring of Professors

Getting a new Professor together with a new area of research is always an exciting challenge for an Institute. It happened officially on Dec. 1st, 2006; but unofficially Prof. Quandt was already around in mid-October - lecturing "Thermodynamics" and "Sensors". In other words: Teaching classes and managing what was left of Prof. Weppner's group continued without an interruption.
Big deal, you might think; after all, retirement dates are pretty well known and there should be enough time for finding and hiring a new Professor. This is correct in theory, but the experience is otherwise. Neither Prof. Seegebrecht nor Prof. Heuberger will have his successor in place when they leave end of March 2007 or February 2007, respectively.
When a professor leaves the university - either by retirement or by changing to better and greener pastures - the recruitment of a successor takes far more than a year; often two years are needed, and it is very hard to predict how the (highly bureaucratic) procedure will stumble along. Since it was known that Prof. Weppner had to retire end of Sept. 2006, procedures were started in Nov. 2004 by the installment of a "Berufungskommission" (Probably best translated as "search committee"). What happened next is shown (abbreviated!) in Table 1.
Since several actions of the TF Convent and of the CAU Senate are needed, there are automatically certain time constants attached - nothing, e.g., can happen from mid-July to beginning of Nov., because these august bodies do not meet then.
Even after the head of state ("Ministerpräsident") has actually made the offer (typically some 6 - 12 weeks after the whole procedure left the university), it may still take quite some time before the fish is landed. The appointee must negotiate his or her salary and, often more difficult, his initial endowment, i.e. how much initial investment, how many rooms and how many slots for people are available, and so on and so forth.
This takes time, sometimes more than necessary because the candidate may have similar negotiations (secretly) going on somewhere else. Quite often negotiations get stuck or falter completely. In this case, the ministry may "call" No. 2 on the list, or the procedure is closed and goes back to the beginning. No. 2, by then, may no longer be available....  		  
11-24-04 Convent of TF installs commission
4-6-05 1st meeting of commission
9-8-05 Advertisement in Newspaper
11-24-05 2nd meeting of commission; decision who gets invited
2-14-06 Candidates present themselves
2-15-06 3rd meeting of commission; Decision which experts will be asked to supply references.
4-20-06 4th meeting of commission. A list is made and commented
4-26-06 List is accepted at the Convent to the TF and passed on to the Senate of the university
5-10-06 List is accepted at the Senate of the CAU and passed on to the Ministry
7-5-06 Head of S.-H. government offers the Professorship to E. Quandt
7/8-06 Meetings in Kiel with E. Quandt for negotiations.
9-21-06 E. Quandt accepts offer
12-1-06 Ministry formally signs contract
We have a new Professor!

Table 1 It's a long way...

This does not only look a bit over-complicated and bureaucratic, it actually is. And that brings us right back to square one (look for "lawyers").
Nevertheless, Prof. Quandt is here in Kiel, and we sincerely hope that the next issue of the "KielMat Occasionally", appearing in a few months (we hope), will have good news to report about the successors of Profs. Heuberger and Seegebrecht.
  hf