The "Friends and Sponsors of TU Bergakademie Freiberg" (VFF) met for their annual general meeting at the end of November.
On 29 November 2024, around 130 active members of the association met, approved the audited 2023 annual report, discharged the Board of Directors for this financial year and confirmed the proposed budget for 2025.
The association of around 1,400 members is on a solid financial footing and granted a total of 65 funding projects for students, institutes and the university in 2024. These include the Oppel, Weisbach and Agricola Prizes. Ms Patricia Kaiser, Faculty 4, was the winner of the Agricola Prize and gave a presentation on her thesis on the 3D printing of steel-ceramic composites in refractory components.
After an informative speech by the Rector of our university, Professor Klaus-Dieter Barbknecht, there was a presentation on "Next Level Cybercrime? How AI can deceive us" by Professor Dirk Labudde from Mittweida University of Applied Sciences.
Afterwards, around 60 members of the association were given a guided tour of the new university library building.
The rest of the evening was all about Barbara: 230 celebrants began the Barbara celebration with the awarding of the honorary Arschleder to Professor Hermann Heilmeier for his work in endowing the "Humboldt-Bonpland Foundation for Biological Sciences" to the existing Günter Heinisch Foundation "Geosciences Collections".
This endowment, which has been in place since this year, will promote and further expand teaching and research in the field of organismic biology, both recent and palaeobiology. Professor Michael Schlömann gave the laudatory speech. Three miners from the Historische Freiberger Berg- und Hüttenknappschaft performed the honours ceremony.
The following stage programme was colourful: in addition to dances by Indian students and a performance by the Saxonia Freiberg Mining Music Corps, association member and former "Freiberg Mining Singer" Dr Jens Behrend performed a song about his former work at the Institute of Deep Drilling Technology and Petroleum Extraction. The evening was rounded off with the Steigerlied.
All participants received the "Annual Compendium of the TU", the association's magazine ACAMONTA 2024. This closes the VFF financial year 2024 and prepares for the coming financial year 2025.