Dr. Schmid-Schlager finished her studies in Technical Chemistry and Industrial Engineering at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz. For the diploma thesis within Technical Chemistry she focused on Physical Chemistry and accomplished her studies on Organic Schottky Diodes under the supervision of Prof. Niyazi Serdar Sariciftci at the Linz Institute of Organic Solar Cells (LIOS). After that, she started her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Sariciftci in the field of biocatalytic and bio-electrocatalytic CO2 reduction using microorganisms and enzymes and finished moreover her second diploma thesis in Industrial Engineering in the topic of CO2 reduction at semiconductor electrolyte interfaces. After one year as a postdoctoral assistant she joined in January 2017 the group of Nonwovens & Technical Products of the Research & Development Department of Lenzing AG. In her research, she focuses on the investigation of biological degradation of cellulosic products, the chemical and mechanical aftertreatment of cellulosic fibers and design of new, safe hygiene and technical products.
Anil Kirhalli was born in Ankara, Turkey. He holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s degree in logistics. After 10 years of experience at various levels of international B2B sales in logistics companies such as UPS and Panalpina he then joined Kansan in 2010 as an area sales executive. After a year he was appointed as the Sales Manager. He is currently working as the Sales and Business Development Director of the Group.
Dr. Anna Gergely, a European Patent Attorney in a role equivalent to partner, with a PhD in analytical and quantum chemistry, brings to clients a unique combination of deep scientific understanding and cutting-edge regulatory knowledge in environmental legislation, focusing on chemicals, food, food contact materials, consumer products and workers' safety matters. With more than 20 years of experience in law firms in Brussels focusing on EU regulatory law, she provides companies with comprehensive product compliance strategies and creative regulatory solutions in areas related to the REACH Regulation, the Biocidal Product Regulation with specific emphasis on in-situ generated active substances and treated articles, legislation on cosmetics, food and feed, food contact materials, medical devices, toys, and other regulated products. Anna is consistently recognized in the top tier by the legal directory The Legal 500 EMEA for her work in all the areas of her practice, namely chemicals and environment, and food safety: she has the "rare ability to give clients not only legal advice, but also a scientific interpretation of complex REACH matters," and her "excellent scientific background" is a "great asset."
Experienced business leader and manager. Specialized in a field of ecology and environmental innovations. Expertise in strategic consulting gained in PwC. Joined a family company in 2015, tripled its turnover and turned into European leader in an area of natural, plastic free, hygienic products. Master in Finance, ESCP Europe (Paris, London). Actively engaged in supporting social initiatives and cultural projects.
Dr. Karson Durie is the Associate Director of the Athens Research Center at Danimer Scientific. She leads a team in product development to replace petroleum-based plastics with poly(hydroxyalkanoates). Throughout her tenure at Danimer, Karson and her team have developed materials for blow molding, paper coatings, injection molding, but most notably marine-degradable/home-compostable fibers. Karson holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Georgia and is currently receiving her MBA from the University of Georgia.
Lynda Kelly holds the position of Senior Vice President Americas & Business Development at Suominen Corporation. She has a long breath of experience in nonwovens with leading positions at First Quality Nonwovens and International Paper.
Jutta Stehr graduated in Computer Science at RWTH Aachen and joined Daimler Benz soon after. Fascinated by the potential of artificial Intelligence, she became part of the Daimler-Benz research group on Machine Learning in the late 1990s. A couple of years she dived deep into (market) forecasting and finally worked for Barmag AG as a market research specialist. Over time, she evolved into a marketing pro for capital goods, leading a small team of marketing and communications specialists. In 2012 she joined Trützschler Nonwovens & Man-Made Fibers GmbH in the same position.
Peter is currently a Principal Consultant at WRc in its Wastewater Infrastructure team which specialise in wastewater and stormwater networks. He has been in the wastewater industry for over 30 years starting out a contractor, and then for Wessex Water to manage the Private Sewers transfer before joining WRc in 2009. He has an extensive background in short term flow surveys, pipeline condition assessment and sewer rehabilitation. He is currently working on projects aimed at reducing the number of sewer blockages including reducing the impact of Wet Wipes and Fats Oils and Grease in our sewer network.
He is the Technical Lead for the Fine to Flush testing scheme
Outside of work he’s a keen cyclist and a Bristol Bears rugby fan.
In the beginning of his career Bertram Wevers was a sales agent for artificial fur working across Western Europe. After a couple of years, he made the switch to an importer of interior textiles, being responsible for product development and buying in the Far East and responsible for sales to key accounts in Western Europe. After 20+ years in this field, he made the switch to education to Saxion University and is still teaching technical textile courses and is a final thesis coach at the Saxion Master education Innovative Textile Development. In 2020 he graduated as a Masters in Textiles at the North Carolina State University and is also still active as a researcher at the study group Sustainable & Functional Textiles of Saxion University, where his research is focused on the mechanical recycling of textiles. Since this year he is also working at Frankenhuis BV (part of Boer Group), a mechanical textile recycling company in Haaksbergen, where he is, among others, working on optimizing the mechanical recycling processes.
Arnaud is gratuated in Mechanical and Industrial Manufacturing Process with a Master‘s Degree Engineering from the University of Technology Belfort-Montbéliard (France).
He has joined ANDRITZ Perfojet in 1999, serving initially as Project Manager and moved to sales department in 2004, developping markets for complete spunlace and air-through bonding nonwovens lines in various areas such as China, Turkey and Far East countries.
Lara Wyss is a strategic communications leader with experience leading teams and campaigns focused on consumer products, reputation management, environmental affairs, and crisis communications. She has led communication campaigns for some of the world’s leading brands, including Starbucks, Unilever U.S., eBay, and has served on communications committees for trade associations including the National Coffee Association and American Cleaning Institute (formerly the Soap & Detergent Association). Her experience with community-based environmental programs includes leading brand partnerships with The Nature Conservancy, The National Parks Foundation, Conservation International, and Keep America Beautiful.
Richard Knowlson has an Honors Degree [BSc (Hons)] from Trent University in the UK. He currently owns RPK Consulting LLC which he founded in March 2019. Previously he worked for almost ten years with Jacob Holm leading their Business Development & Product Development activity.
Richard has worked in the Airlaid and Spunlace industries in Technical Development roles for more than 30 years and has multiple patents in these technologies. He has served on the INDA Board of Directors and has written and presented multiple papers at EDANA and INDA meetings all over the world. In 2022 Richard was presented with the INDA Lifetime Technical Service Award for his contributions to the Nonwovens Industry worldwide.
Heidi Beatty has a successful track record as an Innovator and project manager. Over her 20+ year career, Heidi has launched products for some of the world’s leading brands as well as for some of the most entrepreneurial start-ups. As CEO of Crown Abbey, Heidi and her team helps a global client base across consumer, health care and nutritional categories to identify and commercialize new technologies.
After gaining a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of York, UK, Heidi worked with Johnson & Johnson for over 10 years across Europe and the US. From there, she has worked at both mid-size companies as well as start-ups, before founding Crown Abbey, nearly 6 years ago.
Heidi speaks & moderates at many conferences on a variety of topics, including women’s health products, innovation and project management tools.
David M Jackson completed a BSc. Chemical Engineering at UC Swansea (Wales) in 1976, then went on to complete an MSChE at University of Washington (Seattle) in 1978. David was a Senior Technical Leader at Kimberly Clark for 38+ years at headquarters sites in Wisconsin and Georgia, with a primary focus on nonwoven composites for wiping, absorbency, disposable elastic composites and treatment chemistry and processes. After taking retirement in 2018, David started a non-wovens consultancy, Material/Process Connexxions. David holds >60 US materials and process patents and > 200 worldwide
Jason Finnis is a 30-year veteran of the hemp and natural fibre industries with hands-on experience in all aspects of the value chain. He has a strong background in fibre innovation and is adept at developing intellectual property that leverages the inherent qualities of bast fibres and brings performance and sustainability to the nonwoven and textile industries.
Phillip Mango has spent almost forty years in nonwovens, starting in 1981 with Air Products and Chemicals, where he was the Manager of the Nonwovens Group. Air Products was the major supplier of latex binders to major nonwovens used in wipes, notably airlaid and DRC (double recrepe). In 1991, he left Air Products to join Walkisoft USA as Director of Technology. Walkisoft was the largest global producer of airlaid at that time. Sensing a need for a more innovative, specialty oriented airlaid producer, Mr. Mango started his own airlaid business and designed and built a specialty airlaid line in 1997. This company, Airformed Composites, was one of the early developers of commercial multibonded airlaid for baby wipes, as well as other unique products and process advances. In 2000, Concert Industries acquired Airformed Composites and Mr. Mango. With Concert, Mr. Mango was the Director of Product Development. In 2002, Mr. Mango left Concert to start his own consulting business, Phillip Mango Consulting, LLC. Over the last 18 years, Mr. Mango has consulted extensively in the wipes market, technology, nonwovens and raw materials. He has authored numerous studies on flushable wipes, the global wipes market and technology, and other nonwovens related subjects.
Educated in Textile Engineering & Management, Heidi van den Hul has chosen to work in different applications in the Textiles Industry; in Fashion, Bedding, Interior and Nonwovens. She started her career in Production and Quality Management followed by different commercial jobs in Purchasing, Sales and Marketing.
She has held different positions in the Nonwovens industry, she was Global Segment Manager Hygiene and Wipes at Jacob Holm, Marketing Manager EMEA at Lenzing AG and Market Manager at PGI.
Heidi van den Hul has founded her company fabriCreation in 2012. She is currently working as a consultant and coach for multiple companies.
As Head of Marketing&Branding EU/AM/MEA, Miray Acar leads the marketing&branding department of Lenzing’s Nonwovens division in the biggest region.
Miray has been working at Lenzing Group since the year 2018. She has 15 years of marketing experience in several FMCG companies and had research studies at ETH Zurich after getting her MSc. degree on Material Science&Engineering.
BS Industrial Engineering - Electrical Engineering University of Seville, Spain
BA Business Management Communication - Wisconsin University Madison
Spanish citizenship although I studied, lived and worked in many places besides Spain, Melbourne - Australia, Green Bay, Chicago and New York in the USA.
I have worked in the Paper and Nonwoven industry for the last 25 where 5 of them, were dedicated on the motion control for air linear servo motor robots at Rockwell Allen Bradley in New York.
Last but not least, on my last 6 years I had the opportunity to work for a great company, IMA Teknoweb as a Sales Manager on EMELA territories for capital equipment on the NW wet wipes segment.
Andrea Vittadello coordinates the group of Project Managers in our Science Center and is himself Project Manager for the "Sustainability" area. He has been part of this laboratory since 2002 in the non- food division and has been involved almost immediately in Biodegradability and Compostability studies. He is a member on these matters of the European Bioplastics Technical Committee , BPI Committee and Standardardization working groups of CEN, ISO, UNI, ASTM. He was involved as a stakeholder in the Ecolabel EU certification of Detergents and Cosmetics.
Dr. Haynes currently serves as the Technical Director for Global Nonwoven at Kimberly-Clark Corporation. He has held a variety of positions during his 30-year career including R&D, management, and operations. His specialty is in Front End Innovation with a focus on fiber forming technologies (Spunbond and Meltblown). He has 44 US patents and 20 trade secrets at Kimberly-Clark. He earned a B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He is the recipient of the Society of Women Engineers Rodney D. Chipp award and also the INDA Lifetime Technical Achievement Award.
Per is a senior research analyst at Euromonitor International with a focus on Tissue and hygiene. Based in London, he has more than 3 years of experience in the industry. Per advises clients on key trends, market movements and new developments, delivering an understanding of the product categories as well as country specific insights. Per also participates in conferences and writes tissue related articles in various trade press as well as develop content that is published by Euromonitor International.
Eamonn Tighe has responsibility for the development of business in Europe with Ingeo Fibers & Nonwovens. He has been with
NatureWorks LLC for the past 19 years, working from his offices in Ireland.
Eamonn has an MBA from the UK’s Open University Business School
He has spent more than 30 years in the Fibers, Nonwovens & Plastics industries. He previously worked with Wellman International in Ireland over a 20 year period where he held senior technical, product development and commercial roles.
In the past 25 years, he has travelled extensively in all EU countries, as well as in Asia and the US working with Polyester and Ingeo PLA fibres & nonwovens.
In his Business Development role, Eamonn works directly with all levels of the supply chain.
Textile Engineer from the University of Applied Science in Moenchengladbach, Germany. From 1995 I worked 25 years in machinery sales for Nonwoven machinery.
Thereof I was 15 years with Truetzschler Nonwovens and from 2011 – 2020 their Managing Director Sales. 2020 I joint Winkler + Duennebier in Germany as their Vice President Sales & Market Development Hygiene Solutions. Since Mai 2022 I am Vice President Sales & Market Development for BW Hygiene Solutions,
which includes PCMC’s Wipes Converting Technology.
Mat Rice holds the position of Head of Supply Chain for Rockline UK and has been with Rockline for 12 years. Mat has worked in supply chain for over 20 years within the FMCG sector. Mat oversees purchasing, planning, warehousing, and customer service for Rockline UK.
