Our Speakers

Dr. Martynas Audronis is the inceptor of the Inteleg® process-intelligence platform and founder of Nova Fabrica Ltd. He works with OEMs and coating plants around the world to deliver multi-sensor diagnostics and AI-driven process stability for large-area glass and thin-film manufacturing.

Dr. Utku Er is a Flat Glass Product Development Specialist at Şişecam, focusing on advanced thin film coatings, Low E technologies, antenna applications and innovative glazing solutions. He received his B.Sc. degree in Physics Engineering from Hacettepe University, and earned both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science at Middle East Technical University (METU). His work centers on developing high performance automotive and architectural glass products through layer stack design, process optimization, and next generation coating technologies.

Thoralf Gebel is a Professor of Innovation Management at the University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Germany. With a background in ion-beam physics and nanotechnology, he earned his PhD from Dresden Technical University in 2002. Throughout his career, he has combined academic research with entrepreneurial activities, founding and leading several technology-oriented start-up companies and spin-offs. His work focuses on advanced materials processing technologies, mainly based on ion beam and electron irradiation technologies, as well as flash lamp and laser annealing applications on temperature sensitive substrates.  He brings a unique perspective that bridges science, entrepreneurship, and industrial innovation.

Managing Director of AOM-Systems since 2014.

Christoph Hilgers holds a PhD in Macromolecular Chemistry from the RWTH Aachen University. He joined Momentive Performance Materials (formerly GE Bayer Silicones) in 2000 and started his career as R&D laboratory manager followed by the role of European program leader for hardcoats in automotive glazing and forward lighting applications with focus on siloxane resins and UV-curable coatings. Since 2011 he leads the global UV-hardcoat technology platform and was promoted in 2019 to the role of Global Technology Platform leader UV-hardcoats and Weatherstrip coatings. In 2022 he moved to the role of a Principal Scientist.

Dr. Banpreet Kaur is an Advanced Scientist at Momentive Performance Materials GmbH in Leverkusen, Germany. She holds a PhD in Materials Chemistry, where her research focused on the development of active materials for organic electronics in display applications. At Momentive, she specializes in development of functional coating technologies, with expertise in thermal and UV curable systems across a range of substrate materials. She contributes to technology innovation projects, leading synthesis & formulation development to enable high performance, durable coatings solutions for industrial and automotive applications.

Şener Oktik, a professor at Maltepe University in Turkey, holds a PhD from Durham University (UK) since 1982. His diverse career spans academia and industrial research, including roles at BR Research Centres (UK) and Sisecam Research Development and Design Centre (Turkey). His focus lies in inorganic/organic material growth processes and their characterization, with an emphasis on developing novel materials for energy efficiency and harvesting. His work encompasses emerging semiconductor materials for photovoltaic applications and coatings for industrial glass. Oktik’s expertise is recognized internationally through memberships in prestigious organizations such as the International Commission on Glass (ICG) and the Society of Vacuum Coaters (SVC). He also serves on advisory and scientific committees for conferences and societies like the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference (EU-PVSEC) and the European Physical Society (EPS) on behalf of the Turkish Physical Society.

Mustafa Ozan Özer holds degrees in Materials Science and Engineering and Ceramic Engineering from Anadolu University, complemented by international research experience at Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble. He has built his career at Şişecam, one of the very few global companies active across all core areas of glass, with a market value of over USD 3.3 billion, more than 23,000 employees, and a production footprint spanning 14 countries across four continents. For the first 15 years of his professional journey, he held leading roles across glass processing and coating operations, progressing from Production Engineer to Production Manager. Over the last four years, he has served in senior leadership roles at Şişecam R&D Center, first as R&D Coating Technologies Director and today as R&TD Product Development Director, contributing to the company’s innovation and value-added product portfolio.

Dr. Paul Poodt is CTO at SparkNano, a Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition equipment company. He is also part-time associate professor at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research focus is on Spatial ALD and its industrial application for the manufacturing of e.g. batteries, photovoltaics, and (opto-)electronics.

Damian joined Eckersley O’Callaghan in 2012 to establish a facade engineering discipline, now recognised as among the global leaders in the field, with an outstanding reputation for design and innovation and a strong focus on sustainability. With over 25 years of professional experience, Damian has worked on projects of all scales and on all seven continents. He oversees EOC’s sustainability team and has particular in experience in building retrofit, low-carbon design and circular use of materials . Today Damian lectures widely at universities, is a board member of the UK Society of Facade Engineering and is a founding member of the CWCT sustainability steering committee.

Sudhanshu Shukla is a senior researcher at Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), Belgium. He was also a Marie Skłodowska–Curie fellow at IMEC. He obtained his PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2017 working on earth abundant materials for thin film and mesoscopic solar cells. He was a visiting research scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of California, Berkeley, USA (2016). Before joining IMEC, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory for photovoltaics at the University of Luxembourg (2020) working on wide bandgap chalcogenides for tandem solar cells. His research at Imec focuses on fundamental understanding and application of novel compound semiconductors for direct/indirect (photo)electrochemical scalable solar-to-chemical production. He is coordinating a European project (PHOENIX) and leading/co-leading several national projects on solar fuels and waste valorization.

David Stevenson is the President of Ampres, Inc. located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the USA. He is the principal inventor of a new generation of linear ion sources. He has more than 40 year’s experience in large area, display, semiconductor coating. He developed and patented the first commercially successful rotary magnetron. He implemented the first dual magnetron AC sputtering along with a wide variety of improvements to large area and display coating.

Dr. Michael Trubetskov holds Ph.D. and Dr. Sc. degrees in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, with doctoral research focused on inverse synthesis and characterization problems in the optics of multilayer coatings.

Since 2012 he works as a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching b. Munich. Since 2023, he is CEO of OTF Studio GmbH in Garching. Dr. Trubetskov specializes in thin film optics, coating design and characterization problems, optics, electrodynamics, applied mathematics, laser science in bio medical applications, computational mathematics and physics, machine learning and data science, computer science, software development, and parallel computations. Dr. Trubetskov has more than 300 publications and his h index value is 37 according to Scopus.

Martins Zubkins is a leading researcher and Head of the Thin Film and Coating Technologies Group at the Thin Films Laboratory, ISSP, Latvia. He obtained his doctoral degree in Solid State Physics from the University of Latvia in 2018 and has extensive expertise in the development of functional thin films. His research focuses on metal oxides, hydrides, and mixed-anion compounds, including photochromic thin films and ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors. Dr Zubkins specialises in the synthesis of thin films by magnetron sputtering and investigates their properties for potential applications in smart window and optoelectronic devices. His work has contributed to advances in thin film science and has resulted in more than 42 scientific publications (h-index = 12, Scopus). In addition, he holds European patents on innovative deposition technologies and thin film materials. Since 2019, he has also been an active lecturer at the University of Latvia, sharing his expertise in thin film science and deposition technologies with the next generation of researchers.