As if the Netherlands are not cold and wet enough: Wilma Dierkes got a part-time Visiting Professorship in Tampere, Finland
In April 2009, Wilma Dierkes started with a part-time professorship at the Technical University Tampere, Finland. She spends 25% of her time in Tampere, supervising MSc and PhD students, giving classes and re-establishing the research in Elastomer Technology within the Department of Materials Science. Her research is focused on reinforcing filler technology and recycling; the same topics as she is concentrating on here at the UT. Within her research project, the Finnish companies Nokian and Teknikum are involved. Nokian is actually not the phone company, but a company producing tires, mainly winter tires. Teknikum makes technical rubber goods for e.g. the mining industry. The projects are called ‘Wilmix’ and ‘Wilremix’: the first one is the filler technology part, the second name was chosen for the recycling part. One characteristic of her Finnish colleagues is that they are very creative in finding this kind of typical descriptive names. And one of the positive surprises was the fact, that the climate is a lot better than its reputation. The summer was warm, and when she visited Tampere for the first discussions about the work last winter, it was surprisingly light, because - yes - they do have a lot of real snow and ice there.
