We congratulate António Guterres on the Charlemagne Prize!
Last thursday, UN-Secretary General António Guterres received this year's International Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen. Even before the official award ceremony, the Charlemagne Prize laureate traditionally spoke to around 1,000 students at RWTH Aachen University about the future of Europe. Afterwards, students had the opportunity to pose questions about the laureate's views and assessments on a European policy with regard to climate change, human rights and technological innovations.
António Guterres expressed his connection to his engineering colleagues at RWTH Aachen University since he himself graduated in Electrical Engineering. Prior to his political career, Guterres studied Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Lisbon.
For this reason, the Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Professor Jens-Rainer Ohm, and the Rector of RWTH Aachen University, Professor Ulrich Rüdiger, handed a special gift to the Charlemagne Prize laureate - an individually designed Silicon-Wafer, embellished with a personal congratulatory inscription. The wafer was designed by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and manufactured at the faculty's Institute of Materials in Electrical Engineering 1.
As a first step of the manufacturing process, the 150mm, oxidazed Silicon-Wafer is vaporized with an electron beam evaporator with chromium and gold. Afterwards, it is coated with a lacquer layer. Then, the wafer is exposed with the specified design and these exposed areas are, as a last step, etched away, resulting in a golden motif and engraving.
Further Information and photos of the event can be found on the main page of RWTH Aachen.