Under the motto "Timber Structures - Research for Practice", we would like to cultivate the traditional and intensive exchange between research and practice with you. On October 10 and 11, 2024, you can expect a diverse spectrum of the latest developments and research.

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Congratulations to Michael Steilner! Michael Steilner was awarded the NwT 2023 teaching prize for his course "Building Construction - Excercise". The award ceremony took place on June 10 as part of the NwT annual celebration. In their assessment, the students emphasized the practical and well-explained content and Michael Steilner's dedicated teaching style. The additional course hours offered for NwT students were particularly impressive.

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Congratulations to Carmen Sandhaas on her successful Habilitation! Carmen Sandhaas' work, entitled "Timber fasteners - a study on input parameters for the design of timber joints", offers an in-depth analysis of all relevant strength parameters of screws and nails along with their potential for standardization.

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Congratulations to Simon Aurand on Successfully Defending his Doctoral Thesis! Entitled "A contribution to friction in timber connections", Simon Aurand demonstrates how surface modification of steel or timber members significantly enhances load-carrying capacities of connections, especially with inclined screws.

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Good times with our Students: Excursion 2024. This year, we had the privilege of organizing a four day excursion in the Structural Engineering Master's program at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Click here for the excursion report.

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We feel honored and grateful that our innovative hybrid timber-steel beams have been recognized as one of the awardees of this year's KIT Innovation Prize, presented at the NEULAND Innovation Competition. The innovation is described here: Hybrid Timber Structures

The Association of Friends of the Research Centre for Steel, Timber and Masonry awards a prize for the best master's thesis in recognition of excellent scientific achievements. A prize of EUR 1,000 is awarded for a thesis in the field of steel structures and EUR 1,000 for timber structures.

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Modern adhesive technology now enables bonding steel profiles to timber beams without premature timber failure under significant bending loads. Our large-scale 4-point-bending tests show improvements in bending stiffness (up to 250%) and load-carrying capacity (up to 120%) compared to traditional glulam beams. These findings suggest competitive and resource-efficient solutions, particularly for multi-storey buildings requiring large floor spans. This paper provides simple engineering calculation models for reliable design of this innovative solution: doi.org/10.3390/ma17051164