Daniel Kehret received the Best Young Researcher Award at the international conference Progress in Digital and Physical Manufacturing (ProDPM'25, October 1-3, 2025) in Portugal. The ProDPM'25 conference was hosted by the Politécnico de Leiria in Portugal. The focus is on topics such as Advanced Manufacturing Technologies, Digital Manufacturing and Simulation Systems, Design and Green Manufacturing, CAD and 3D Data Acquisition Technologies, Materials, and Applications, presented in keynotes from academia and industry, as well as in various conference contributions to an international audience.
The award was presented to Daniel Kehret at the closing ceremony on October 3rd, based on an evaluation of the criteria: relevance of the research, quality of the presentation, and quality of the answers to questions.
His doctoral research focuses on the additive manufacturing of magnetoresponsive materials for the creation of functional structures, also known as 4D printing. In his contribution to the conference, "Multi-Material 4D-printing of a force-generating magnetoresponsive bionic muscle for adaptive soft robotics," he addresses the force exertion of magnetoresponsive soft robots created using 4D printing, an area that has received little attention to date. He works in the Rapid Prototyping Laboratory under the direction of Prof. Dr. Stefan Junk (HSO), who is also his doctoral advisor. In addition, Prof. Dr. Bastian Rapp from the Institute for Microsystems Technology at the University of Freiburg supervises the doctoral project.
Further details on the award-winning contribution will be published in Lecture Notes on Multidisciplinary Industrial Engineering by Springer Nature. Furthermore, technical articles by Daniel Kehret can be found in Advanced Manufacturing Technology by Springer and in Materials & Design (in press) by Elsevier. More information can be found at 4D-Printing Research Group.
In addition to the customized design of magnetoresponsive bionic muscles considering non-linear force profiles, questions regarding the reversibility of actuation also present future challenges for science. A team consisting of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Junk, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Seifert, and Daniel Kehret has successfully submitted a DFG (German Research Foundation) proposal to investigate these topics.