Dr. Michael Stelter

Michael Stelter, born in 1956, studied chemistry at the University Darmstadt, including chemical technology. After his Diploma Thesis he worked at the university for his Ph.D. in the field of intermetallic compounds and crystal structure analysis, awarding his Ph.D as Dr.-Ing. in 1987. His industrial career started at Norddeutsche Affinerie (NA) (now Aurubis) in Hamburg, becoming soon deputy director of the R&D department. During this time, among other things, he developed new highly innovative processes for the production of copper chemicals and for waste water treatment, both international patented. From 1992 until 1994 additionally he was appointed to the board of directors of Transvaal Alloys Pty., South Africa, a subsidiary of NA. From 1994 to 1997 he moved from metallurgy to recycling, into the fields of electro-plating, recycling technologies of process water and closed circuits developing new industrial processed applying membrane technology first time in this field.

1997 he was appointed Full Professor and director of the institute for Nonferrous Metallurgy and Purest Materials of TU Bergakademie Freiberg, the oldest academic institution for mining and metallurgy worldwide, as professor for "Technology of Nonferrous Metals and Materials Recycling".

Because of his expertise he was appointed as Main Technical Consultant of Expert Services for the “German Federal Ministry for Education and Research” (BMBF) in the domain of environmental protection technology.

Twice he became elected as Vice-Rector of TU Bergakademie Freiberg, from 2000 - 2003 as vice-rector for Education and Structural Development, later from 2010 - 2013 as vice-rector for Research. In this time he started an initiative to establish eit-RawMaterials, an important EU funded platform for research and innovation in the complete field of raw materials up to recycling processes (https://eitrawmaterials.eu/). In addition together with colleagues he was initiating the later in 2011 founded Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF), emerging from a joint application by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, to which the HIF belongs today, and the TU Bergakademie Freiberg.

In the research area he focused on processes for industrial application, directly linked to basic research in metallurgy. Research focused on electrolysis processes in electro-refining and electro-winning. Some of the new developed processes directly were introduced into industrial application.

A second area of research at the institute became the development and production of semiconductor mono-crystals, entire research was linked directly to industry, too.