Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sándor Vajna VDI, has 20 years of experience within industry and research on management, consulting, research & development, and international lecturing on product development, design methodology, standardization, CIM, CAD/CAM, engineering systems integration, advanced manufacturing methods, new organizational approaches, education and training.

He received his M.Sc. Mechanical Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe in 1977, and his PhD from the University of Karlsruhe in 1982. His research area and the topic of his thesis were "Rechnerunterstützte Anpassungskonstruktion" (Computer Aided Adaptation Design). Parallel to his studies he worked regularly in different companies and ran his own consultancy company. In 1975, he was a member of the Students Government at the University of Karlsruhe, responsible for External Affairs.

During his industrial career, he worked with the following companies: Carl Freudenberg (Weinheim), where he was Corporate Manager for CAD/CAM Application and Design Standardization; ABB Research Center (Heidelberg) as Manager Information Technology / Company Automation; Braun AG Kronberg (A subsidiary of Gillette Boston) as Corporate Manager Central Software Tools and Standards. From 1989 to 1991 he ran a public research project on CIM and Multimedia systems being in parallel the holder of the Chair of Manufacturing Techniques and Manufacturing Organisation at Mannheim Polytechnics.

In 1994 Sándor Vajna was promoted to Full Professor of the Chair of Maschinenbauinformatik (Information Technologies in Mechanical Engineering) at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg. His research areas include Integrated Product Development; Engineering Process Model; Product Modelling by Feature Technology & Parametrics; Product Optimisation using Evolutionary Methods; Engineering Systems Integration; CAD/CAM Systems Application & Migration; Calculation methods & tools of the economic viability of new technologies. He has taught on Integrated Product Development, Product Modelling, CAD/CAM (three lecture courses), Interfaces and Archiving, and Project Management. Parallel to this, he has run his own consultancy company.

He has published 19 books, 200 publications, and has given more than 150 presentations. He is a member of the advisory boards of the scientific journals "CAD-CAM Report" and "EDM Report"; member of the Advisory Board of the Design Society (http://thedesignsociety.org); member of the Supervisory Board of CIDEON AG Bautzen (www.cideon.de); member of the Berlin Circle (www.berliner-kreis.de); member of VDI (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure - German Society of Engineering, www.vdi.de), Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für CAD/CAM-technologien Karlsruhe e.V. and CAD/CAM-Entwicklungsgesellschaft (CEFE) München (www.cefe.de).