On the 25th of October 2019 the 2nd d|b|t|a Women in Chemical Engineering Day took place. More than 20 students registered for the event. Female research assistants from d|b|t|a and from other departments gave insights into their work, as well as alumnae and guests from industry. A highlight was the interactive workshop led by the coach Vera Strauch. We finished the day with a dinner together and had very open talks until the late evening. Thank you for your participation and feedback - we hope to see you again at d|b|t|a.

During the CAPE-OPEN 2019 Annual Meeting David Krone, Erik Esche and our former coworker Gregor Tolksdorf received the CAPE-OPEN 2018 Award. It was awarded to our group for the past and still ongoing research around CAPE-OPEN. In addition, David Krone gave a talk about his research on Mixed-Integer Optimization in GAMS using CAPE-OPEN Thermodynamics via MOSAICmodeling and COBIA for Conceptual Design.

On the 30th of September 2019 Dr.-Ing. Gregor Tolksdorf successfully defended his doctoral thesis on Automatised Implementation of CAPE-OPEN Interfaces: A Workflow for Equation-Based Flowsheet Modelling. The d|b|t|a sincerely congratulates and wishes all the best for his future.

From 15th to 19th of September 2019 the d|b|t|a was represented at ECCE12 & ECAP5 in Florence (Italy) with two lectures and two posters. Markus Illner presented his work on systematic analysis of a surfactant containing system, Volodymyr Kozachynskyi talked about the OPC UA based concept developed in our group, Tim Karsten showed new results on oxidative coupling of methane in a miniplant scale reactor, and Matthias Hilpert presented his investigation of mass transfer in a miniplant scale Rotating Packed Bed.

As part of a DAAD-supported Summer School entitled “Optimization in Process Sciences and Process Simulation” Thomas Budiarto, Erik Esche and Saskia Bublitz performed a MOSAICmodeling workshop at the Chemical Engineering Department of ITENAS in Bandung/Indonesia from 19th to 23rd of August 2019. Therefore, a MOSAIC-modeling server has been installed at ITENAS to provide fast access to the software and workshop data. Thanks to all organizers and the students for their enormous hospitality and generosity!

We proudly announce that on the 25th of October 2019 the 2nd d|b|t|a Women in Chemical Engineering Day will take place. As last year, it will be a one-day-event that aims to give you insights into our research, our cooperation with industry and international partners. There will  be a lot of interesting contributions as a keynote talk by Dr. Sabine Ardey from BSH Home Appliances Group and a workshop given by the female leadership expert Vera Strauch. The >Flyer< for the event provides you with more information. You can register for the event by sending an e-mail to: xenia.gabrisch@tu-berlin.de, subject: Registration for the Women in Chemical Engineering Day 2019. Please provide your full name, your course of studies and university, and your current semester (BSc./MSc.). You will receive more information on the agenda after your registration. We are looking forward to your participation!

From 5th to 8th of August the world's greatest conference on mathematical optimization (ICCOPT2019) took place at the Technical University of Berlin. On invitation by Dr. Carmen Gräßle (MPI Magdeburg, left) and Tobias Keil (WIAS) Henning Bonart gave a talk in the session Optimal Control of Phase Field Models. Here, he presented our recent joint work with Dr. Christian Kahle (TU München, right) on the Active and Passive Control of Droplets through Optimal Contact Angle Distributions.

From April to June 2019 Henning Bonart visited Prof. Youssef Marzouk (right) and the Uncertainty Quantification Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. At MIT Henning Bonart was part of the Aerospace Computational Design Laboratory and affiliated with the Center for Computational Engineering. In this collaboration our work on the simulation and optimization of wetting droplets is combined with modern statistical methods to estimate multiphase parameters from simple experiments in a Bayesian setting. On invitation, Henning Bonart presented an overview of our work on Simulation and Optimal Control of Sliding Droplets on Surfaces with Topographic Structures and Variable Wettability in the lab's seminar. He successfully applied for a scholarship by the DAAD and was co-funded by the TU Berlin and the SFB/Transregio 63 InPrompt.

On the 7th of August 2019 Mr Dr.-Ing. Sven Kunkel successfully defended    his doctoral thesis. In his PhD thesis, he experimentally investigated the phase change behaviour of an eutectic mixture (Phase Change Material - PCM) in a thermal storage with direct contact between heating liquid an PCM. His contribution to understanding the occurring phenomena is a valuable advance in the scope of the energy revolution. The d|b|t|a sincerely congratulates and wishes all the best for his future.

From 22nd to 23rd of July the annual group retreat of d|b|t|a and our summer event took place. The whole group met at the Youth Hostel Ravensbrück and together we discussed the orientation and many different current topics. The evening was followed by a barbecue and cool drinks. We were very lucky that the next day gave us sunny wheather which was perfect for our draisine and swimming trip.