Leadership Award 2019 for Lutz Wegener

IPP engineer honoured for outstanding leadership in the development of fusion

Dr. Lutz Wegener from Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald will receive the Leadership Award 2019 for outstanding leadership qualities in the development of fusion. The prize is awarded annually by "Fusion Power Associates", a research and educational foundation supported by US-American scientific institutions and companies that provides information on the state of fusion research and applications of plasma physics.

With this award, Fusion Power Associates recognizes the leadership qualities of Dr. Lutz Wegener, which, according to the laudation, have led "to the initial and continued success of the Wendelstein 7-X project” and his “leadership of  teams of engineers, contractors and foreign collaborators necessary for that success”.

As head of the assembly department from 2001, Lutz Wegener, together with a team of 150 IPP employees and external personnel, planned the construction of the Greifswald research plant, developed the assembly concept and the necessary technological solutions and tools. From 2005, Wendelstein 7-X was built under his management. Ten years and well over a million working hours later, the plant was completed and could be handed over to the physicists. 2018 saw the worldwide stellarator record for the fusion product, which indicates how close a fusion device comes to the values for a burning plasma.

The Leadership Award 2019 will be presented to Lutz Wegener during the “40th Annual Meeting and Symposium”, to which Fusion Power Associates invites to Washington, DC, at the beginning of December.