Sampe Student Award

In the afternoon selected students competed for the Swiss SAMPE Student Award and for the opportunity to represent Switzerland at the SAMPE Europe Conference 2005 in Paris by presenting their study works. Among several contributions of high quality, the presentations of Ms. Daniela Suppiger from the ETH Zürich about the synthesis and characterisation of conductive polymers and of Mr. Julien Plojoux from the EPF Lausanne about the modeling of glass fibres reinforced plastics membranes especially impressed the jurors, who granted them the SAMPE Student Award.

The conference has been closed by the key-note lecture of Prof. Urs Meier, deputy director of Empa, who addressed the new frontiers of lightweight constructions in the field of mechanical and civil engineering by discussing so-called “adaptive materials”: materials able to actively react to an ingoing signal with, for example, a shape change.

The response of the audience – composed by more than 60 people from the industry and from the academic world – was enthusiastic, as witnessed by the numerous questions posed to the speakers and the interesting discussions that arose.

 Niccolò Pini, ETH Zurich