Plenary Speakers

Andrew joined Fisher & Paykel Healthcare in 2006 and has held various roles in product development and manufacturing management. He was appointed Vice President – Products & Technology in April 2016. His current responsibilities include research and development, product marketing and clinical. Before joining Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Andrew was a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and holds a doctorate in physics from the same university.

Dr. Ines Kuehnert is the Vice Director of the Institute of Polymer Materials and the head of the Processing Technology department at the Leibniz-Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (Leibniz-IPF). She has more than 25 years of polymer processing and material development research experience and are involved in research projects and industry cooperations related to process-controlled morphologies and interfaces, multi-material combination (injection molding, additive manufacturing), and process monitoring and simulation.

Further Activities: Spokesperson of Expert network “TPE-Forum”, International Representative Germany in Polymer Processing Society (PPS), Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), Association of German Engineers (VDI) – contributions to the VDI-guideline 2019 “Testing the adhesion of thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) on substrates” and 2020 “Characterisation of flow behaviour of thermoplastic elastomers (TPE)”

Kim Ragaert is full professor at Maastricht University, where she is the Chair of Circular Plastics within the Department Circular Chemical Engineering (CCE). She leads a 25-staff research group on Brightlands Chemelot Campus focused on mechanical recycling of plastics and making the overall circular plastics system work.

Kim is highly committed to training the next generation of engineers and chairs the educational programme committee of the BSc Circular Engineering at UM’s Faculty of Science and Engineering.

A respected authority in her field, Kim’s 2017 review paper on plastics recycling has been cited over 2500 times, she was the 2020 European Plastics Recycling Ambassador and a 2024 Royal Finalist of the Prins Friso Engineer of the Year award. She helps move the plastics industry towards circularity via her work as an Impact Committee member on ReOcean Investment Fund and scientifically supporting major reports like the well-known 2022 ReShaping Plastics report. Kim is a founding member of Brightlands Circular Space.

Kim is a Structural Analyst at Rocket Lab working on the development of Neutron, this is a reusable carbon-composite launch vehicle designed for mega constellation deployment, deep space missions, and human spaceflight.