Prizes and honors

1993	Masing Memorial Prize of the German Society for Materials Science (DGM)
1994	Roland B. Snow Award of the American Ceramic Society, together with Ulrike Täffner
2004	Dionýz Ilkovič Memorial Medal of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
2004	Appointment as a member of the World Academy of Ceramics
2006	Fellow of the American Ceramic Society
2008	Lee Hsun Lecture Award, Chinese Academy of Science, Institute for Metal Research, Shenyang (China)
2011	Honorary doctorate from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava (Slovakia)
2015	"DGM Pioneer" for special achievements and merits in the expansion of the DGM expert network of the German Society for Materials Science.
2016	Chairman of the Gordon Research Conference on Solid State Studies in Ceramics 2016.
2017	Robert B. Sosman Memorial Lecture Award, Basic Science Division of the American Ceramic Society
2019	Erwin Schrödinger Prize, Stifterverband Science Award 2019 in the category Research between disciplines, together with Alexander Colsmann, Susanne Wagner, Holger Röhm, Tobias Leonhard, Alexander Schulz
2022	Full Member of the International Institute for the Science of Sintering
2023	Seeger plaque of the German Ceramic Society
2024	Honorary membership of the German Society for Materials Science

Honorary activities

2003 - 2005	"Meeting Committee" of the American Ceramic Society
2005 - 2010	Chairman of the DGM/DKG High-Performance Ceramics Joint Committee
2008 - 2011	Board of Directors of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS)
2009 - 2013	Spokesperson of the DGM technical committees and their representatives on the Board of the German Society for Materials Science
2011 - 2015	Nominating Committee and Ross-Coffin-Purdy Award Committee of the American Ceramic Society
2012 - 2022	DFG Lecturer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
since 2006	Member of the board of trustees of the Steinbeis Foundation, Stuttgart
since 2021	Reviewer for the Henriette Herz Scouting Program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation