The ceremony was opened by the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs Ao.Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Kurt Matyas who welcomed the audience to the historic buildings of TU Wien, celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2015. Afterwards, the Dean of Academic Affairs for Continuing Education, Prof. Bob Martens welcomed the guests and introduced the representatives of the cooperation partners Doc.Ing. Stefan Stanko, PhD, Vice Rector for Education and International Relations (Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava) and DI Karin Mottl, MSc, Managing Director of the Energiepark Bruck/Leitha.

The festive speech was held by DI Theresia Vogel (CEO of the Climate and Energy Fund, Austria), herself an alumni of TU Wien. She reminded the graduates of their responsibility for a sustainable future. As saying “Do, what is necessary for our future” she called them on to make right decisions and to do right projects from now on.

In the main part of the ceremony, the academic degrees and certificates of study completion were awarded for the respective postgraduate programs.

The Continuing Education Center of the TU Wien & the STU Bratislava proudly present the graduates of the Professional MBA Automotive Industry:
•    Lugeen Bin Mahfooz, MBA
•    Steven Cook, MBA
•    Manuel Einhaus, MBA
•    Markus Johannes Ganahl, MBA
•    Roland Hintringer, MBA
•    Christian Jursitzky, MBA
•    Petar Karaivanov, MBA   
•    Julian Merget, MBA
•    Nadine Siedentopf, MBA
•    Alexandra Steiner, MBA
•    Pal-Levente Tibori, MBA

The Continuing Education Center of the TU Wien proudly presents the graduates of the MEng Membrane Lightweight Structures:
•    Dave Belmonte, MEng (Philippines)
•    Clive Kirsten (South Africa)
•    Su Mi Moe (Myanmar)
•    Juan José Ramirez Zamora (Mexico)
•    Trevor Scott (Australia)
•    Lorenzo Spedini (Italy)
•    Ales Vanek (Czech Republic)
•    Muhammad Yaseen Younas (Pakistan)

The Continuing Education Center of the TU Wien & the Energiepark Bruck an der Leitha proudly present the graduates of the MSc Renewable Energy in Central & Eastern Europe:
•    Atanas Atanassov, MSc
•    Dusan Blagojevic, MSc
•    Alexander Fischer-Fürnsinn, MSc
•    Johann Höfler, MSc
•    Svetlana Kirilyuk, MSc
•    Andrej Miljevic, MSc
•    Gerhard Mütter, MSc
•    Julia Schmidmayer, MSc
•    Joachim Schreiber, MSc
•    Reinhard Wagner, MSc
•    Johannes Wahlmüller, MSc

The Continuing Education Center also congratulates the following alumni to the completion of their university program:
•    Professional MBA Facility Management: Alexander Schlader, MBA
•    General Management MBA: Sabine Ransböck, MBA
•    Certificate Program “Immobilienwirtschaft & Liegenschaftsmanagement”: Oxana Dubrovina and Maximilian Weimar

The awarding of the diploma degrees was followed by valedictorian speeches of the different Master programs.

Ms. Alexandra Steiner, MBA represented the Professional MBA Automotive Industry class and reflected on the past 4 semesters. She looked back the study packed with condensed and perfectly compiled lectures, more than 10 field trips to prestigious companies and hundreds of hours over the past year of writing the master’s thesis. Further she spoke about her experience, like working with highly talented people, getting high-class lectures, getting to know insights of pertinent automotive companies and the Vienna / Bratislava fun package.

The valedictorian for the Membrane Lightweight Structures program, Mr. Clive Kirsten, MEng looked back on the past two years which passed very quickly, emphasizing the big diversity of the group, students who joined the program from all parts of the world and all continents, participants with difference in background and fields who started a communication about the field of membrane structures, driven by a common passion for this topic.

Ms. Julia Schmidmayer, MSc represented the MSc Renewable Energy in Central & Eastern Europe students. She was one of four women in class and the percentage of women was just 25 %. So she talked about the importance of female networks and encouraged all women to be interested in engineering topics and to move into technical fields.

After the official ceremony, the alumni, the guests of honor as well as the family and friends had a chance to raise their glasses to the successful completion of the program.

We congratulate the alumni and wish them all the best!