EtherCAT Technology Group welcomes Gerhard Grunwald as new director

Gerhard Grunwald succeeds Peter Heidrich as the new director on EtherCAT Technology Group’s board.

Heidrich was elected in the beginning of 2004 as a board member after the group’s foundation and has been confirmed in office eight times since then. In 2004 he was still director of the drives engineering department at ETG founding member Baumüller, and since 2010 he has also served a professor of Control and Drive Engineering at Pforzheim University. The members and the board of the ETG thanked Heidrich for his many years of commitment and unanimously elected him an honorary member of the association.

The new director Grunwald was the very first to sign the membership application for the newly founded EtherCAT Technology Group back in November 2003.

Grunwald has been with the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen-Weßling since 1988. He has since coordinated many national and international research projects.

The membership assembly also confirmed Dmitry Dzilno from ETG founding member Applied Materials in Santa Clara and Martin Rostan from Beckhoff Automation in office in the board of directors of the EtherCAT Technology Group.