Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKSOliver Gutfleisch is Professor of Functional Materials at the Technical University of Darmstadt and Scientific Director of Fraunhofer IWKS in Hanau. He deals with new materials for energy-efficient technologies, magnetic materials and materials engineering. One focus of his work is the development of innovative materials and the substitution of very rare and expensive raw materials and materials at element, process and product level. The focus is on permanent magnets with drastically reduced rare earth content, for example for use in electric motors and wind turbines, as well as on the development of rare earth-free permanent magnetic and magnetocaloric materials.
Professor Gutfleisch has published over 370 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and has been invited more than 200 times as a speaker at scientific conferences. Internationally he is involved in numerous scientific advisory bodies, including EU ERAMIN (Network on the Industrial Handling of Raw Materials for European Industries), EU ERECON (European Rare Earths Competency Network), TMS Magnetic Materials Committee and the IEEE Magnetics Society. He has held visiting professorships at Imperial College London, the Chinese Academy of Science NIMTE Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering in Ningbo and the CNRS Grenoble. Gutfleisch is speaker of the DGM Functional Materials Committee.
Since autumn 2017 he is visiting professor at the University of Parma, in April 2017 he received an ERC Advanced Grant (Cool Innov) and in September 2018 the DGM Award 2018.