New appointment: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Kunick has been Professor of Energy Systems Engineering at the HSZG since the start of the summer semester. A return and a new beginning.
"Like the rector," says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Kunick and laughs, "I am a product of the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences." In 2001, Kunick enrolled as a mechanical engineering student and studied design engineering. He tells an anecdote from that time: "I had a fellow student with financial problems sitting next to me in a thermodynamics exercise. He asked the professor if he needed a student assistant so that he could earn some extra money . There are always projects, said the professor, and asked if I would be interested." Kunick agreed out of politeness so as not to offend the professor. His fellow student soon dropped out of the project. But Kunick stayed. And that was a good thing. "I later worked as a research assistant in the Department of Technical Thermodynamics under Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Hans-Joachim Kretzschmar and always kept in close contact with the university, even when I wasn't employed at the HSZG. Prof. Kretzschmar ultimately gave me the opportunity to do my doctorate in a cooperative process at TU Dresden under Prof. Uwe Gampe."
The HSZG runs like a red thread through Kunick's life and provides him with exciting projects and a professional future. After completing his doctorate, his work at the HSZG also took him to the USA, to Idaho. "You have to take the opportunity to work at a large institute like the Idaho National Laboratory," says Kunick. So he moved with his wife and two girls, now aged seven and three, to Idaho Falls, a town of 60,000 inhabitants. For the first 71 nights, around 10 weeks, they slept in a hotel - and you can imagine a bit more what makes Kunick tick when you know that he counted those nights. "It was a challenge at first to organize everything there," he says. "But we managed it well." Then the container arrived with their belongings from Germany. They found a terraced house to rent and a daycare center for the children. "Things went really well for me at work; I was lucky with the projects and had great colleagues," Matthias Kunick could imagine staying in the USA forever.
When his wife fell ill and had to have an operation, they were both reminded emphatically how valuable a well-functioning healthcare system is. "It was interesting to get to know the American healthcare system," he says. "We are extremely spoiled by the healthcare system in Germany." Kunick's wife needed the familiar family environment to recover. "In the USA, my wife would not have recovered from her illness in the foreseeable future. So it was with a heavy heart that we said goodbye to our friends, neighbors and colleagues there. Of course, we are now back home and are happy to have our friends, family and colleagues who were always there for us."
Kunick has now been Professor of Energy Systems Engineering at the HSZG since the start of the summer semester. "It was a stroke of luck for me that I was allowed to come back to the HSZG." There are comparatively few positions for university lecturers at colleges and universities, so the air is getting thinner and thinner further up. "Energy systems engineering as a subject area is a good fit for my career. Teaching is now my main focus," says Matthias Kunick. Every university lecturer has to focus on that first. Apart from that, you can of course still pursue your own research interests. "In research, you are free, you can develop freely. In contrast to large research institutes, however, you also have to take care of personnel and research funding yourself."
Kunick started his position at the HSZG on March 1 and gave his first lectures a week later. Then came the coronavirus lockdown and with it the requirement to offer teaching in digital form. "Of course, that's a bit challenging when you're just immersing yourself in teaching again." Especially when the whole family is at home due to the pandemic. Kunick's wife works in the purchasing department at Siemens. "She's just on the phone, has her headset on and is on the phone to China," Kunick laughs when he talks about it. "I look after the girls when they're unwell. Fortunately, they are now back at school and nursery. So things are calming down again, I can devote myself to my video lectures and go back to Zittau."
These video lectures mean an enormous amount of work for Kunick. He records them and then posts them online. "I offer students the opportunity to send me their questions by email. That works very well. The advantage of the video is also that you can watch it as many times as you like until you understand a more complicated context."
Matthias Kunick has a few projects in the pipeline that he would like to work on. One, we can already reveal, involves the development of a thermonuclear rocket engine for manned Mars missions at the Idaho National Laboratory, funded by NASA. But at the moment it is difficult to find staff. "Good graduates in energy technology and mechanical engineering don't have to worry about their future," says Kunick. There are many interesting opportunities in both industry and research. Perhaps one day it will be Kunick's students who make a contribution to shortening the travel time to Mars and thus advance humanity a little further.