Speaker
Dr. Manuel Häußler studied chemistry at the University of Konstanz, where he completed his PhD in 2021 on novel, fully recyclable plastics, referred to as “Plastic 2.0.” This work was awarded the German Thesis Award in 2022. Based on his doctoral thesis, he founded the company aevoloop GmbH in 2024, which now employs 25 people in Leipzig and is scaling the technology to industrial quantities. Alongside his role as co-founder and CSO of aevoloop, he serves as a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. As a founder and researcher, his goal is to offer alternatives to existing high-volume plastics to enable a genuine fresh start, rather than a mere “Band-Aid solution” to one of the greatest problems of the 21st century.
Dr. Jens Hamprecht is Vice President at BASF SE, based in Ludwigshafen, Germany. He coordinates BASF's Global Plastics Steering Committee, and he leads the global network of BASF experts that specify the roadmap of the company for plastics circularity. He has completed his master’s in engineering at ETH Zurich and Imperial College London. He holds a PhD in corporate sustainability from University of St. Gallen. He is Vice Chair of PlasticsEurope Deutschland, Board member of BKV, and co-founder of PRLS, an organization supporting plastic waste collection in Indonesia.
Mara Jensen is Project Manager for Materials & Circularity at WWF Germany, focusing on FMCG and packaging. She is responsible for the strategic development of material-focused issues within the context of circular economy, advises on bilateral partnerships, and contributes shaping the organization’s positioning on these topics at both national and European level. Previously, as Technical Lead at one.five GmbH, she led innovation projects across the full R&D life cycle (TRL 0–7). Her work included translating EU-regulations, industrial applicability, and ecological consideration into coherent material strategy for sustainable packaging alternatives. She holds a M.Sc. in Chemistry from TU Berlin and is advocating for a systemic transformation within the planetary boundaries to drive genuine progress toward a circular economy.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Müller-Kirschbaum is Chief Scientist at Circular Valley. He studied physics, chemistry, and environmental sciences at the University of Cologne and RWTH Aachen University. He spent 32 years at Henkel in Düsseldorf in senior leadership roles, including heading global Research & Development and global Production and Supply Chain for the Laundry & Home Care business. He also led the development of Henkel’s integrated sustainability strategy and, until his retirement in 2020, co-chaired the Henkel Sustainability Council. Today, he serves as an independent advisor on sustainable transformation, focusing on climate neutrality, the energy transition, circular carbon systems, sustainable packaging, and the circular economy. He has led the plastics packaging working group of the Circular Economy Initiative Germany (acatech) and serves on advisory boards including the Fraunhofer Cluster Circular Plastics Economy and the DIN/DKE Circular Economy Board. He is also active as a business angel and investor in circular economy start-ups and teaches Global Innovation Management at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences.
