Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wiltrud Treffenfeldt

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wiltrud Treffenfeldt was born in 1954 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany. After studying food technology and biotechnology at the Technical University of Berlin, she received her doctorate from the University of Dortmund in 1983. From 1987 to 2005 she assumed responsibility for the new lecture course in Bioprocess and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Hannover, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and was awarded the title of Professor in 1995. After joining Degussa/Evonik in Hanau in 1984, she built up the departments of biotechnology and environmental process engineering – including for the large-scale fermentative production of amino acids and enzymes – and headed these departments until her retirement in 2000. In 2001, she joined Dow Chemicals, first as R&D Manager for Europe, and subsequently as Head of “Biopharma R&D/San Diego/USA” with a focus on the development of microbial expression systems for the pharmaceutical industry. In 2005, Prof. Treffenfeldt moved to the subsidiary Dow AgroSciences in Indianapolis/USA in order to build up and lead the biological research and production for fermentatively produced insecticides as “Global Director Biochemical Engineering”. In 2011, she assumed the role of Chief Technology Officer for Dow Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, and was a member of the global leadership team. In this function, she initiated “Customer Innovation” projects and worked intensively with international research organizations. She actively oversaw the merger between Dow and DuPont to form DowDuPont, and the subsequent split into the three new companies from 2016 to 2019.

Prof. Treffenfeldt has been actively involved in scientific committees and organizations such as Dechema, OECD, GVC and VCI since 1985. She was a member of both bioeconomy councils of the German government. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe and of the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB, Stuttgart. Prof. Treffenfeldt acts as an expert consultant to German and Swiss universities.

Since June 2019, she has been working as an independent consultant, in particular for SMEs and scientific organizations.

Prof. Treffenfeldt has been a member of the BRAIN Biotech AG Supervisory Board since October 14, 2020 and is appointed until the end of the AGM in FY 2024/25.

Further memberships of statutory Supervisory Boards in Germany:

• Member of the Supervisory Board of the ProBioGen AG, Berlin
  

Further memberships in comparable German and foreign Supervisory Boards:

• None

Independent within the meaning of Section C.6, C.7 and C.9 of the German Corporate Governance Code:

Yes

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Last update: March 2023