The new AiF president is managing director and co-owner of GTV Verschleißschutz in Luckenbach in the Westerwald. The core competence of the medium-sized company is the design and manufacture of turnkey coating systems for thermal spraying and laser buildup welding. Dr Nassenstein succeeds Prof Sebastian Bauer, whose term of office ended by rotation.

Nassenstein studied mechanical engineering and materials technology at the Technical University of Dortmund. In 1996, he received the inaugural DVS sponsorship award for outstanding achievements in the field of thermal spraying and earned his doctorate in Dortmund one year later. He has been with GTV for 27 years, first as head of research and development, later as authorized signatory and since 2005 as managing director and co-owner.

“I have been passionate about applied research and development since I started my career, and they shape my commitment as an entrepreneur and scientist. So it is obvious that the AiF and I very soon became ‘partners’,” Nassenstein explains with a wink, alluding to the fact that he already contributed his expertise in the early 1990s as an industry representative on the Thermal Coating and Oxyfuel Technology technical committee of the AiF Research Association on Welding and Allied Processes eV of the DVS.

Through his participation in numerous project-accompanying committees of IGF projects, he also has deep insights into the AiF network and its impact. “The structure of the AiF enables the success of the worldwide unique Industrielle Gemeinschaftsforschung, I experience this daily in my entrepreneurial activities as a representative of the German SMEs,” he is convinced. “Therefore, I am pleased to be able to actively shape the further development and positioning of the AiF in a strongly changing environment as AiF president in the future.” And jokingly, he adds, “A greater challenge than the new [German] defense minister will hopefully not await me.”

The executive committee meeting also elected Thomas Reiche, managing director at FEhS-Institut für Baustoff-Forschung eV, Duisburg, as vice president and Dr-Ing Peter Dültgen, managing director of Forschungsvereinigung Werkzeuge und Werkstoffe eV (FGW), Remscheid, as treasurer.