Hannover. Curently, when real meetings cannot run or can only run in a limited way, people meet online. Anyone who wants up-to-date insights and inspirations in the field of lightweight construction should take part in the LightCon Preview Week. From 22 to 26 June 2020, every morning will feature a half-hour webinar at 9 a.m. followed by a question and answer session.

These five speakers will provide insights into their specialty areas: On Monday, Yves Mattern, managing director of Lignoa Leichtbau GmbH, will kick off the event with the talk "Wood as High-Tech Material of the Future". On Tuesday, Tassilo Witte, project manager and Airbus recycling expert at CTC GmbH, discusses "Sustainability in Aircraft Manufacturing: Trends and Technologies for Composite Materials". Bionics is the focus on Wednesday when Dr. Christian Hamm, department head of bionic lightweight design and functional morphology at the Alfred Wegener Institute, presents "Structure, Material, Software: The Future of Bioinspired Lightweight Design". Stefanie Brickwede, managing director of Mobility goes Additive, discusses lightweight construction through additive manufacturing on Thursday with the topic "Lightweight for Mobility: From Locomotives, Cars and Cyborgs". On Friday, Dr. Nico Liebers, project manager at the Institute of Composite Structures and Adaptive Systems of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), will give the talk "Towards Smart Production: Sensors, Information Flow, Architecture and Analysis". The language of all webinars is English.

LightCon Preview Week is a joint venture of LightCon organizer Deutsche Messe AG and LightCon founding partner Composites United, one of the world's largest networks for fiber-based multi-material lightweight construction.

"We are pleased that LightCon Preview Week, which runs on our original premiere dates, will whet the appetite for LightCon 2021 with exciting lightweight construction topics," says Maria Christina Mihm, LightCon project manager at Deutsche Messe. "Particularly during the current crisis, it is important to think ahead and set the course for a strong economy and industry. Lightweight construction will play a key role in this."

Composites United has recently started offering webinars on a regular basis and has had very good experiences with them. "For our members, it is an uncomplicated and efficient way of staying up to date on the many and varied topics of lightweight construction, even from the home" says Dr. Gunnar Merz, CEO of Composites United. "Nevertheless, it is clear that a webinar cannot replace direct contact. But the Preview Week will increase the anticipation of the first real LightCon 2021 and give a small foretaste of the quality and content of the conference programme, which we will then present in more detail in Hanover in June 2021".

Participation in the LightCon Preview Week is free of charge. Further information and registration is online at www.lightcon.info. Following registration confirmation, participants receive login data for the individual webinars. Each webinar runs approximately 30 minutes and consists of a short keynote speech followed by time for participants to ask questions.

The premiere of LightCon will take place from 23 to 24 June 2021 in Hannover. It will be a platform for all lightweight construction solutions – for competing materials and processes as well as for hybrid solutions and constructive lightweight construction. The new congress and trade fair provides a marketplace for competition as well as a high-quality contact exchange for new ideas, partnerships and networks. Peter Altmaier, Germany’s Federal Minister of Economics and Technology, is the patron of LightCon.