Organization of the institute

Alongside the organs stipulated in the bylaws of the Institution - the General Assembly, the Board of Trustees, the Executive Board and the Academic Advisory Council - the key pillars on which the Institute rests are its six specialist research departments as well as its Quality Management and “Training and Education” units.

DIK particularly values promotion on the part of its members. By force of their membership, companies assist the Institute in maintaining and further developing the technical competence in the area of rubber that is needed to carry out research and, above all, to provide a wide range of services. The member companies include many renowned raw material suppliers, machinery manufacturers and firms in the rubber industry.

The Board of Trustees consists of one representative each from the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics, Transport, Building and Digitalisation, the Wirtschaftsverband der Deutschen Kautschukindustrie e. V. (WDK), the Deutsche Kautschuk-Gesellschaft e. V. (DKG), and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover, as well as leading figures in the rubber industry and in scientific research.

The Executive Board is made up of the chief operating officer of the Deutsches Institut für Kautschuktechnologie e. V. (Prof. Dr. Ulrich Giese, DIK), a representative of the Deutsche Kautschuk-Gesellschaft e. V. (Dr. Manfred Grothe, DKG) and a representative from industry (Helmut Heyne, ADK).

The task of the Academic Advisory Council is to provide the DIK Executive Board and the Board of Trustees consultation in all research matters as well as in all other matters bearing on the Institute's professional activities. It is composed of up to six members active in university and industrial research and instruction.