The team

Thanks to his close of 20 years of experience working as a Research and Innovation Manager at Euratex and currently as Secretary General of the European Technology Platform, he disposes of a rich knowledge and unparalleled network of contacts into the European Textile and Innovation eco-system. In the past, Lutz successfully acted as a coordinator of several large-scale EU collaborative research, innovation and networking projects. Lutz dedicates a significant share of his working time in the operational and financial management of Smart X as he views the project as a most promising support mechanism for effective market-oriented innovation in textile SMEs or start-up . Lutz is of German nationality and speaks fluently English and French. He holds degrees in Business Administration (Germany), Political Science (France) and an Executive MBA from Vlerick Business School in Belgium.

Graduated in textile engineering and design engineering from the Terrassa School of Engineering (EET) at Polytechnic University of Catalonia. She collected business experience as Account Manager in the fashion and clothing industry before getting into textiles project management. Nowadays, she is the junior coordinator of SmartX at the European Technology platform. Spanish & Catalan native speaker with full professional proficiency in English and French.

With a degree on Systems Engineering and Informatics by University of Minho - Portugal, Paulo has background experience in large companies such as SONAE (retail) or TMG (Textile Manuel Gonçalves Textile Industry) where he worked in IT manager. At the present, he’s the head of Innovation Management Department of CITEVE where gather considerable experience in the last 14 years in Project Management truth several national and European consortiums with distinct types of companies from different nationalities, according the PMBOK methodology. He’s work inside CITEVE also embrace financial management with budget control and beyond budget analyses, strategic planning. He's also responsible for all Intellectual Property Rights and Entrepreneurship issues of CITEVE.

Virginie obtained an engineering degree in 2010 from HEI, a French school of engineers located in Lille with a focus on textile manufacturing, and took a 1-year specialization in smart textiles at the Hochschule Niederrhein in Germany. After some internships by Decathlon and CMI, she selected Centexbel, the Belgian Textile Research Center for a 6-months internship on photovoltaic textiles. This internship ended up in a full-time position as a research engineer, where she was in charge of several European and regional research projects for 6 years. She was in charge of the smart textiles department and gained experience in electronic integrated textiles and in various manufacturing processes (knitting, weaving, coating, finishing, screen printing, additive manufacturing). Since 2018, she has worked for EuraMaterials and is in charge of the smart textiles developments. Her mission is to support companies in their innovation strategy, to build research projects for them, and to take part in various innovation consultancy projects.

An experienced Lecturer about fashion marketing at Institut Français de la Mode and other institutions, Danièle’s range of expertise covers consumer behaviour, strategic marketing, innovation strategies and competitiveness policies. As the Secretary General to the R3iLab innovation network, she regularly collaborates with France’s Ministry of Industry to design and implement various collective initiatives to help creative industries raise their competitive level on the global scene by acquiring updated design and technological capabilities. Danièle also carries out strategic studies on behalf of the European Commission mostly focused on fashion innovation, sustainability and SME-related issues and challenges. An alumna of INSEAD’s MBA, her career has been focusing on textile and other creative industries since an early stage when she first joined the Chargeurs Group as international marketing director, after being in charge of market intelligence at Rothmans International. She then went on to set up and set up IFM’s Market Research and Consulting Department.

Mark is born and raised in Hasselt, Belgium. He graduated in 1987 at the Industriële Hogeschool Groep T in Leuven as an Industrial Engineer in Biochemistry. After a career of almost 15 years as a technical service and product development engineer of specialty chemicals for the European pharmaceutical, paper and textile, he joined Centexbel in 2002 as a Technological Advisor for the Health and Safety Laboratory. This laboratory offers highly specialised technological services (customised advice, measuring and testing, process innovation and product development) to the manufacturers of medical and hygiene-oriented textile products. In addition, he currently has the role of an Innovation Consultant to support and involve the industry in smart textiles related research projects. He was for example the project coordinator of a regionally funded project called Smartpro. This project ran for four years until 2017. The main goal of the project was to stimulate the collaboration across the ICT, electronic and textile sectors and to support companies in application-specific product development and production.

Graduated with dual skills in sciences and economic intelligence, Emilie built capacities in technological innovation watch and also dissemination of the Internet of Thing technologies to several strategical sectors of activity. She started her career in the French Retail Industries Cluster where she helped retailers, technologies companies and research laboratory to meet each other around innovation projects. Then Emilie moved to one of the European leader in strategic intelligence, ADIT Group, where she worked for territorial strategic intelligence and operational deployment. Emilie currently supports economic stakeholders in the domain of the Internet of Things within the innovation Center of Contactless Technologies, the CITC, where she works has an information technology analyst.

Graduated in Chemistry with a qualification for practising chemist profession by the University of Torino (Italy), she is R&D manager at Città Studi Biella and Cluster Manager of Po.in.tex, the Textile Innovation Cluster based in Piemonte. Since 1998, she gained a huge experience in various private enterprises; her expertise also spanned on internal Lab and Production Management (technical materials for textile and non-textile applications, finishing). Paola Fontana is now Città Studi’s in-house manager appointed at National and European Projects coordination, implementation, execution. She is working in the co-ordination of Po.in.tex: coordination of research activities, technology transfer and networking with national and international companies, clusters, research centers and institutions, partnership creation, organization of technical events and B2B, etc.

An international communications specialist and content writer, Pola holds a Master's degree in Marketing Communications from Roosevelt University in Chicago. Her media credits include CNN, NPR, Tech Crunch, American Express, Expedia, among others. Pola has worked on B2B and B2C communications projects with destination marketing organizations, non-profits, and technology startups on both sides of the Atlantic. She is currently based in Paris.

A garment production & supply chain expert and serial entrepreneur in the fashion and textile industries with a focus on technological and sustainable innovations in manufacturing, materials and new business models. She is the founder and CEO of the B2B online sourcing platform SOURCEBOOK, a network of brands, suppliers and manufacturers for short runs production in Europe founded in 2015. Sourcebooks agency organizes a number of innovation showcases, co-creation workshops, matchmaking events and conferences around the globe. As a trained tailor and with a diploma in fashion design she works as a lecturer for Materials Technology and Sustainable Product Management at Akademie Mode & Design Berlin dedicated to future materials and digitization in the creative industries. As a consultant and mentor she supports the Fashion Council Germany with curating the FCG Seminars Programme for emerging German brands and works as a counselor at the German Sustain Concept to accelerate sustainable textiles and supply chain innovation in the DACH region.

Dr. Dilay Kesten Erhart, is Project Manager at Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum/Steinbeis 2i GmbH and works as a key member for trans-regional collaborative research projects. Dilay is a trained architect; holds a PhD in Building Science from Istanbul Technical University and the University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart, has more than 15 years of experience in managing international projects in the energy efficiency, sustainability and Smart Cities and Communities fields. She is the author of several scientific conference publications and international refereed journal papers. She has broad expertise in the innovation management, exploitation and replication activities within projects as well as implementing EU funded support actions on building research and innovation capacity in SME. Dilay is also an active member in the sector group Sustainable Construction of the Enterprise Europe Network since 2018.

Graduated in engineering cybernetics with a special focus on business cybernetics by the University of Stuttgart, he is project manager at DITF in Denkendorf since 2008. Heiko finalised his PhD in 2018 with the topic knowledge oriented management of collaborative innovation projects in Smart Networks. In his work at DITF he got experienced through his work in various European and national research consortia in innovation, knowledge and project management. Currently he takes over the role of a AI-Trainer in DITF's industry 4.0 competence center "Textil vernetzt".

Joined the Smart Textiles, 2015 as Business Innovation Coordinator, responsible for projects driven by needs from the Industry, especially in the sector of Health and Medicine. Extensive network within the textile industry, and professional association related network. Linda has a versatile textile background with long experience of technical and quality management. International and national experience of production evaluation, in addition to product assessment skills. Linda has a BSc in Textile Engineering from The Swedish School of Textiles. Additional courses in Supply Chain Management and Eco-labelling & chemical substances

Amelie Olesen joined the Smart Textiles: Science Park Borås in Sweden in 2020 as a Research Assistant. She works on integration of electronics in smart textiles, product development, technical specifications and garment construction, in addition to prototypes for research testing and displaying. She was a part of SUITCEYES, an EU-funded HORIZON 2020 project with the aim of developing haptic communication technologies for people with deafblindness. Amelie holds a BSc in Textile Technology from The Swedish School of Textiles.

Mónica has over 20 years experience in Business Development and project management. For the last 12 years she has been working in the textile sector, providing advice and developing projects destined to competitive improvements of SMEs by promoting internationalization, innovation and business cooperation. Her role in the Textile Industry Association as Internationalization Manger and Innovation and EU Projects Manager in the past and as Director of Operations today, gives her a wide and wholistic point of view of the textile sector, being international business development and international trade, business cooperation, innovation fostering and project management her main fields of expertise. She has a University Degree in German studies (language and literature) mention in Slavic Languages and Postgraduate in International Trade. Monica has background experience as export manager in different private companies and since 2004 is working for business organizations.

Anna Ribé holds a degree in Textile Engineering with a major in Knitted Fabrics from Universitat Politècnica of Catalunya. She has over 12 years of experience in the textile sector, having worked in R&D project management and mass production in the fashion industry. She brings extensive knowledge of R&D to the SmartX programme in terms of conductive materials, technical textiles, non-wovens, multifunctional textiles, microencapsulation, spray coatings, eco-textiles, and more. She has been involved in developing new design concepts from the lab scale to industrial textile processes. Anna has also participated in a number of industry events and published scientific texts in the field of textiles. Additionally, she is credited in several patents as a co-inventor.

Graduated in Materials Science Engineering by the University of Porto in 1998 and with specialised in Polymer Engineering by University of Minho in 2000 she is, since April 2017, the Executive Director of the Portuguese Textile Cluster. Between 2006 and 2017, Ana Ribeiro worked at CeNTI – Centre for Nanotechnology and Smart Materials being responsible for the Business development in the last 4 years. She has participated, as on the Editorial Team of the “Strategic Research Agenda of European Technology Platform for the Future of Textile and Clothing Industry“. Active participant in different R&D projects, workshops, conferences and seminars related with textile processes and products, with special focus in advance fibres development & prototyping, multicomponent meltspinning and processing of bio-based materials. As Textranet secretary, since 2017, she is responsible for the management of Textranet network, as well as, for the implementation of several Special Interest Groups in strategic areas. She is also representing the Portuguese Textile Cluster in several European networks (ETP-Textile, Regiotex, etc) and consortiums.

Stefano Sbarbati (M) is Open Innovation and ICT Project Manager at Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum. He has a MA in International Politics & Media, and he worked as Project Manager for University of Florence (PIN Scrl) and for the MFG - Innovation Agency of Baden-Württemberg. He is experienced in developing and managing international R&D projects, and he supported a range of innovative SMEs and start up in designing and implementing innovation strategies and business development plans. He is expert in business model, access to finance, business support for SMEs and start-ups and innovation management.

Dieter Stellmach graduated in Technical Cybernetics at the University of Stuttgart. Working since 1986 in the Center for Managment Research at DITF, he is as senior project manager in responsible for research in organisation and management of sustainable value creation in networks, digitsation and individualisation, as well as for project development and management. As EU contact point he is coordinating the EU research actitivies at DITF, furthermore he is pro-active in networks and working groups for fibres and textile on European level (e.g. ETP Textiles).

Björn has a master’s degree in Industrial Sciences in Electronics. After graduating, he worked as a full-time researcher at the University of Leuven, Campus De Nayer. The research projects primarily focussed on the development of algorithms (specifically for image processing) and the implementation of these algorithms onto different hardware processing platforms. After the research projects, Bjorn got active in professional services. First as a technological advisor, later on as a project manager. In that way he got in contact with DSP Valley, where he started working in 2005. Bjorn managed a number of projects as an employee of DSP Valley. Within these projects he performed a wide variety of tasks: from the overall project management, over achieving deliverables and milestones until the coordination of different project actions and activities. In every project the main focus was on connecting companies and/or academic institutes to support and foster innovation. Within DSP Valley Bjorn is currently program manager for the Smart Industry domain. He is managing a number of European and cross-border projects, with a strong focus on Smart Industry and the road towards Industry 4.0. Apart from that he is also responsible for more operational things like being webmaster and IT manager.

Hartmut Welck (M) has a university degree in Agricultural Sciences from University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) and has been working as senior project manager since 2006 as at Steinbeis Innovation gGmbH in the area of innovation -, project- and network management as well as technology transfer with special focus on Biotechnology, Bioeconomy and Food.

Many years of experience from the automotive industry within project management. Establishment of technical requirement specifications with focus on design engineering. Marie has driven projects in production areas to implement automation robot lines for creating higher efficiency of production. Development of organizational framework has also been areas Marie been working within. Today she is a project manager at Smart Textiles and Science Park Borås and running projects within the textile- and social development area. Cooperation on national and international basis together with organizations, companies and institutes. Marie has a Master degree in Mechanical Engineering within product and production development. She is educated within APQP process for the automotive industry.