New SIM colleague
As of December 1st, 2022, SIM welcomed Fleur Maas as its new program manager. Fleur was already familiar with SIM and its activities. Not only because she was literally not far away: BIL and SIM are located in the same building and Fleur thus only moved down 1 floor. But also because of her previous role at the Belgian Welding Institute (Belgisch Instituut voor Lastechniek, BIL). At BIL, several SIM projects were carried out, and there too she already had quite a few contacts at companies and knowledge institutions – which are also relevant to SIM.
Within SIM, Fleur will strengthen and support the team of program managers. Even though Fleur has a degree in materials engineering, the focus throughout her career has always been on metals. She is therefore greatly looking forward to also learning more about non-metallic materials in her new position.
Furthermore, Fleur will assist SIM in its study into the needs of the Flemish materials industry. In fact, SIM disposes of a budget of subsidy resources with which Flemish branches of companies together with knowledge institutions jointly carry out materials-related projects. In addition, SIM assists companies, civil society organisations, and knowledge institutions in their search for answers to specific material-related questions. Appointed by the Flemish government as the Spearhead Cluster (SPC) for the Materials domain in January 2017, Strategic Initiative Materials (SIM) is currently in its 7th year of operation. For this reason, SIM wants to gauge the companies’ satisfaction with its current operations and their future needs. Fleur is mainly responsible for leading the survey, analysing the results, and proposing the right related action points for SIM.
“We look forward to having Fleur on our program managers team. Fleur is very familiar with the Flemish and European materials landscape, both from the research and industrial perspective, and especially for metals”, says Guido Verhoeven, General Manager of SIM. “Without any doubt, Fleur will bring much added value for the SIM community, as well as for the internal organisation.”
Fleur is equally excited about her new position and is looking forward to getting to know the Flemish materials industry (even) better. She believes there remains a lot of potential for materials innovation in Flanders, especially given all the additional challenges today such as climate, CO2, energy, and recyclability … “Flanders really should be prouder of its materials industry, and actively help promote what has already been achieved here. Of course, there are challenges for the future, but I will gladly contribute to solving them from within SIM and wherever possible”, explains Fleur.
Some facts & figures
Fleur completed the Master of Science in Materials Engineering at TU Delft. During her career, she embraced foreign countries and gained additional experience in metals and management.
Accordingly, Fleur has already achieved a great deal. She started in the R&D department in steel production (in Sheffield, UK), where she gained expertise in metallurgy and product development for structural steels and pipelines. She then ‘worked her way up’ in the Fe-C diagram, to tram- and train rails (working as Product & Process Technology manager in Hayange, Fr), and then went even further in the Fe-C diagram, working for Corus Smartlite on thin-walled ductile castings.
In 2010, Fleur started at the Belgian Welding Institute. There, Fleur was introduced to a lot of other metals, and, of course, to the specific joining challenges and in-service issues. After more than 10 years as director of the Belgian Welding Institute, she is now all set for a new challenge as program manager at SIM.
Furthermore, she has also served as a board member at Flanders Make for 4 years and is currently on the board of the Bond voor Materialenkennis. This is a networking group of Dutch and Belgian experts in the field of materials science and processing.
Fleur has a lot of relevant experience and contacts within the materials field, that much is clear. At SIM, we are therefore extremely happy to add Fleur to the team. We would also like to seize the opportunity to welcome her once again via this channel.
Questions for Fleur? You can reach her by mail at fleur.maas@sim-flanders.be or by phone at 0473/69.53.80.