On behalf of the Macromolecules section, board members Bert Gebben and Gert Boven congratulated founder of the section Prof. Ger Challa on his 90^th birthday at his home in Heemstede. It was a pleasant meeting, our visit and gift were greatly appreciated.

This new Belgian-Dutch polymer conference will be organized by Belgian Polymer Group (BPG) at the Belgian side, and KNCV-MM together with “Bond voor Materialen” from the Dutch side. Frank Sekeris from KNCV will actively support in the organization. The goal is to organize a binational polymer conference where Dutch and Belgian polymer groups participate. The conference will be of academic level, but industrial speakers are encouraged to participate. This conference will replace the BPG annual meeting and the traditional autumn symposium organized by KNCV-MM and Bond voor Materialen, a big contribution of the presentations will come from PhD students.
The topic of the conference will be “Polymer Science Driven Sustainability".
The conference will take place 8 and 9 October 2020 at Koningshof in Veldhoven.

Dr.ir. Anne Hélène Gélébart (SABIC - former TU/e PhD-student supervised by Prof. Broer and Prof. Schenning) has won the biannual Challa Polymer Chemistry/Technology prize. She presented her work on “Photo-thermal actuation of liquid crystal polymers” during the Dutch Polymer Days 25 and 26 March 2019.
The selection committee consisted of:

• Prof. dr. Francesco Picchioni (Groningen University) – President and KNCV jury member
• Ir. Marlieke Breijer-Pepels (Teijin Aramid) – KNCV jury member
• Prof. dr. Pascal Jonckheijm (Twente University) – external jury member
• dr. Hans Heuts (Technical University Eindhoven) – external jury member

The prize of €1500 was handed over by Prof. Ger Challa.

During the Dutch Polymer Days the KNCV-MM HBO Poster Award has been awarded to Jarno Guit from NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences. The title of his poster was: “Resin formulation with novel renewable (meth)acrylates based on soybean oil for stereolithography 3D printing”
The board of KNCV section Macromolecules has established the KNCV-MM HBO Poster Award, sponsored this year by SABIC. The award was created to stimulate high-quality applied research and to promote the connection between universities and universities of applied sciences within the Netherlands. It has been awarded for the second time. For this prize, students or recent graduates from Dutch HBO institutions are eligible who have conducted excellent internship or graduation research in the field of polymer chemistry or technology. Students from different applied universities have been pre-selected and presented their research during the poster session at the Dutch Polymer Days. A jury of professionals has selected the winner.

The financial management of the KNCV sections has been revised. From now on the KNCV mother organization controls the finances of the sections. This means that no cash control committee is needed anymore for the sections. Furthermore, the following modifications were implemented:

• Money from "dead sections" is put into a fund and other sections can claim that fund.
• All the money from the sections is owned by KNCV. Small amounts of budget can be spent without justification, above a higher amount expenses have to be accounted for.
• The treasurer of the sections (Dr. Ir. Wiebe de Vos for the section Macromolecules) remains and writes financial annual reports.

For more information about upcoming events and the latest news, please visit the KNCV section MM website here.