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highly recognized research lab on structural research. Especially, the powder diffraction
facilities located at national laboratories in Hamburg and Munich (DESY and FRM II) were
used in cooperation by many guests from Germany and other institutions abroad. In
addition, Prof. Fuess served for several years as dean of the Department of Materials
Science and after unification with Geoscience of the Department of Materials- and Geo-
Sciences. He has strongly contributed to the excellent scientific profile of the department
by his outstanding scientific contributions, but also by his visionary ideas and admirable
management qualities. We will have to struggle hard to find qualified successors.
Fortunately Prof. Fuess has agreed to continue to lead his research group for the next
future until a successor has joined the department. Therefore we still profit from his
experience and knowledge. In September 2006 Prof. Jürgen Eckert followed an offer of
the Institute of for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden as head of the
Department of Complex Solids. We would like to thank him for his contributions in
Darmstadt and wish all the best for his new appointment.
Some of the very qualified junior scientist who have obtained their habilitation at TU
Darmstadt have also left the department: Dr. Doru Lupascu moved to TU Dresden where
he was appointed as professor of functional ceramics; Dr. Roland Schmechel was
appointed as a professor in electrical engineering at University of Duisburg-Essen on
nanostructuring techniques (unfortunately we were not successful to keep him at our
institute with a combined effort of TUD and FZK); Dr. Helmut Ehrenberg has moved to the
IFW Dresden together with Prof. Eckert. We want to thank our younger colleagues for their
valuable contributions to the success of the department and hope for similarly qualified
Post-Docs in the future to secure the high level of our scientific and educational efforts.
A large fraction of time was devoted during 2006 to join the national excellence initiative
with the final application of a cluster of excellence MECAD aiming at multi-functional
materials based on composites for advanced devices. During the first months of the year
regular extended discussions on the scientific content and organisational and structural
demands were held together with our colleagues from the departments of chemistry,
physics, biology, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Finally, thanks to the
perfect management of Prof. J. Rödel a very promising research proposal was submitted,
which unfortunately did not receive funding at the end. However, as we have obtained
encouraging referee reports on the scientific content of our research proposal we intend to
follow this interesting topic as one of our maior scientific subjects of the future.
Fortunately, another major research program in Materials Science, the collaborative
research centre on “Electric fatigue in functional materials”, was positively evaluated in
Oct. 2006 and will continue in its second funding period. This activity is also directed by
Prof. Rödel and a special thanks goes also to Dr. Kinski who provided substantial support
in preparing the proposal consisting of more than 750 printed pages. The proposal was
rated close to excellent by the referees and will be continued nearly without any
deductions. In result, a strong support of the Materials Science research activities was
successfully realized, which will help to keep us in action for the next four years.
The annual event “Materialwissenschaftlicher Tag” in 2006 was devoted to the 60 th
anniversary of Prof. Rauh. At this occasion the research activities in Theoretical Materials
Science at our department were presented. Since Prof. Rauh is not only interested in
theoretical physics, but also in classical music, well balanced contributions of talks, posters
and musical performances of the Rauh family stimulated inspiring discussions on the
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