With 39 participants, our annual conference and general meeting on April 13, 2023 in Leoben set a new record. In addition to the members of our society, we were able to welcome Clive Randall, the director of the Material Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University, as a guest of honor, who was visiting the Montanuniversität Leoben due to a scientific cooperation.

However, in the focus of this annual conference were the eleven applicants for the student speech contest. All of them presented their research with passion and sincere effort. The jury's assessment was correspondingly narrow. As a result, the third prize was awarded ex aequo to Alexander and Herbert Kobald, both of whom work on functional ceramic thin films at the Materials Center Leoben. The second prize went to Christina Nader, who is researching ceramic proton conductors for solid state fuel and electrolysis cells at the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the University of Leoben.

With an excellent lecture on the structural integrity of cold-sintered ceramic materials, Abdullah Jabr from the Chair for Structural and Functional Ceramics at the University of Leoben won first place. He will represent our Society in Student Speech Contest of the European Ceramic Society at the ECerS Conference in July in France. We warmly congratulate the winners and wish Abdullah Jabr all the best in the international competition in Lyon.