44th General Meeting of the SATW: New members, clear decisions and an inspiring tribute

Translated with DeepL

Setting the course and paying tribute

SATW President Benoît Dubuis opened the meeting with an outlook on current challenges and emphasised SATW's role as a bridge-builder between research, industry and society. The General Assembly was organised for the third time as a one-day event followed by an annual congress. The format met with great interest again this year.

Topics such as technological disruption, social change, STEM promotion and securing technological sovereignty formed the content framework.

The annual accounts were approved by a large majority and the actions of the Board of Directors were ratified. Benoît Dubuis was unanimously re-elected as President. Christopher Hierold honoured the achievements of his previous term of office.

New members and committee appointments

SATW welcomed 19 new individual members in 2025, who were officially introduced in the afternoon during the annual conference. Several committees were also newly appointed or confirmed:

• Scientific Advisory Board (WBR): Re-election of President Hans-Peter Meyer as well as members Agathe Koller-Hodac, Max Erick Busse-Grawitz and Walter J. Ammann. Hans-Peter Meyer now thanks the great work of the 34 experts who do a lot of work on committees in the background: Karl Aberer, Hans Altherr, Hanspeter Bachmann, Thomas Bratschi, Stefan Brem , Ivan Bütler, Patricia Deflorin, Patrick Hunziker, Agathe Koller, Eric Kübler , Quentin Ladetto, Martin Leuthold, Andy Mühlheim, Ortwin Renn, Giovanni Sansavini, Mathias Schluep, Alfred Schwyter, Adriaan B. Spierings, Christian Suter, Bernhard Tellenbach, Nicolas Tinguely, Anton von Weissenfluh, Patrick Wäger.
• Industrial Advisory Board (IBR): New election of Anna Valente (SUPSI) and Matthias Lauer (Roche).
• Election Committee: Fabienne Marquis Weible becomes the new President. Franco Gervasoni was confirmed for a further term of office. Benoît Dubuis thanked Christopher Hierold, who stepped down as President of Wako in 2019 in fulfilment of his years of service, for his dedicated work on the Electoral Committee

Outstanding Achievement Award

The SATW has presented the Outstanding A chievement Award for exceptional commitment to the militia system every year since 2015. This year, the award went to Dr Lars Sommerhäuser (Empa), who provided new impetus with his contribution to additive manufacturing, strategic networks and technology transfer in the field of advanced manufacturing.

To the report