The Association of Friends and Sponsors of TU Bergakademie Freiberg (VFF) celebrated its annual conference on 1 December 2023 with a traditional St. Barbara's Day celebration and, of course, the Steigerlied. At the same time, the association has fully arrived in the present: This year's keynote speech by Prof Heinrich Jasper dealt with the topic of "Artificial intelligence today".
The association also honored two outstanding dissertations with the Bernhard von Cotta Prize: the work of Dr.-Ing. Stefanie Walter and Dr. Birk Hänel, both from the Faculty of Geosciences, Geotechnics and Mining.
The members of the association also elected a new board, which now includes: Prof. Swanhild Bernstein, Dr. Constance Bornkampf, Dipl.-Kfm. Klaus Borrmann, Prof. Horst Brezinski, Prof. Bernhard Cramer, Prof. Hans Michael Eßlinger, Prof. Tobias M. Fieback, Prof. Hans-Jürgen Kretzschmar, Lord Mayor Sven Krüger, Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Andreas Redlich, Prof. Matthias Reich, Prof. Michael Schlömann, Prof. Hans-Ferdinand Schramm, Prof. Olena Volkova and Dr. Annett Wulkow. The Executive Board is in office until 2026.
Another important item on the program was the awarding of the Honorary Arschleder to Andreas Massanek from the Geosciences Collections for his work for the Günter Heinisch Foundation of the VFF Association for the Geosciences Collections in Freiberg, which was founded in 2015. Prof. Georg Unland gave the laudatory speech.
The evening's Barbara celebration was attended by 250 guests. Music was provided by the in-house Wood'n'Brass Band and the attendees themselves, who ended the evening with the Steigerlied.