Masterclasses

 Winifred Ijomah is Professor in Sustainable Design and Manufacturing at the Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management at the University of Strathclyde, UK. She is Founder and Director of The Scottish Institute for Remanufacturing (http://www.scot-reman.ac.uk/), a pan-Scotland expertise hub established to spearhead the Circular Economy in Scotland using product recovery. She has elements of her work  incorporated in British Standards Institute, (e.g. BS 8887-220:2010- Design for manufacture, assembly, disassembly) and is member of National and International committees established to  assist industry to meet international environmental legislation. She is founder of and untill April 2021 Editor-in-Chief of Springer’s Journal of Remanufacturing (https://www.springer.com/journal/13243), the first academic journal in the remanufacturing field. She established  and heads the University of Strathclyde Sustainability and Remanufacturing Research Group, specialising in holistic, interdisciplinary, practitioner-based research aimed at enabling circular and Netzero manufacturing. She initiated and chaired the first International Conference on Remanufacturing (http://www.remanufacturing-conference.com/); the first international academic conference for remanufacturing; and now a biennial event running in conjunction with Rematec, the world's leading remanufacturing exhibition. Her work  focuses on product end-of-life, particularly remanufacturing and spans both product and process design with a view to advancing the circular economy. Profressor Ijomah has PhD in remanufacturing, has graduated over 18  PhD candidates in remanufacturing and is a keen STEM Ambassador.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Vette-Steinkamp became Professor of Robotics and Control Engineering at Trier University of Applied Sciences, Environmental Campus Birkenfeld, in 2020. He is a member of the Birkenfeld Institutes of Technology and spokesperson for the profile area of materials and production technology for the energy transition.

As head of the research group for environmentally friendly production processes, he supports companies in implementing sustainable technologies. His research spectrum includes remanufacturing, circular economy, and the use of industry 4.0 technologies, robotics, and artificial intelligence in production. With his research group, he develops methods for the manufacturing, assembly, and disassembly of industrial products with the aim of minimizing resource consumption, energy demand, and CO₂ emissions and making optimal use of the principles of the circular economy.

He is leading several international and national research projects, including the Interreg projects Robot-Hub-Transfer and Robot-Hub-Academy, the BMBF competence center for labor economics and circular economy Komatra, as well as the European automotive cluster PAE Green+, which is dedicated to the decarbonization of the automotive value chain.

In addition to his scientific work, he regularly organizes the Symposium for Innovation and Automation in the Circular Economy.

Prof. Vette-Steinkamp is a founding member of the German Robotics Association, where he is responsible for the research coordination and continuing education working group.

In 2022, he co-founded ignite AI GmbH, where he heads the Campus Consulting group. In 2024, he co-founded the Institute for Sustainability Technology and Education with partners.