Since 01 March 2021, Dr.-Ing. Florian Puch has been a university professor and head of the Plastics Technology Group at TU Ilmenau. At the same time, he will become the new scientific director at the Thuringian Institute for Textile and Plastics Research (TITK) in Rudolstadt, an affiliated institute of TU Ilmenau. His new research and teaching activities will focus on the functionalization of plastics and the design and realization of novel machine systems for plastics processing. At the Thuringian Innovation Center for Mobility (ThIMo), which is based at the TU Ilmenau, he will be responsible for the key competence area "Plastics Technology and Lightweight Construction".
Florian Puch began his scientific career at the Institute for Plastics Processing in Industry and Trade at RWTH Aachen University. There, he headed the Compounding working group and received his doctorate in 2015 on the topic of "Production and properties of carbon nanotube-polyamide-6 composites". Subsequently, Prof. Puch worked at BASF SE in Ludwigshafen, initially in global research, before assuming functions in technology and marketing in the Construction Chemicals division. Most recently, he worked as Global Launch Manager for the MBCC Group in Mannheim, a supplier of construction chemicals products and solutions that was spun off from BASF. Florian Puch is known in the industry for more than 50 publications, technical presentations at national and international conferences, and patent applications.