Japan: KONA-Award for Prof. Arno Kwade

On 13 May 2026, Prof. Arno Kwade from the Institute of Particle Technology was presented with the KONA Award. The award ceremony took place during the 10th World Congress on Particle Technology (WCPT10) in Osaka, Japan. The Kona Award (‘Kona’ means ‘powder’ in Japanese) has been presented annually since 1990 by the Hosokawa Powder Technology Foundation to researchers who have made a significant contribution to research and development, as well as to education, in the field of powder and particle science and technology.

At the KONA Prize award ceremony: Yoshio Hosokawa (President of the Hosokawa Powder Technology Foundation, right) and the 2025 KONA Prize winner, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Arno Kwade (Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany). Photo credit: Hosokawa Powder Technology Foundation

With this award, the KONA Award Committee recognises Prof. Arno Kwade’s pioneering contributions to the fundamental understanding of particle stress and his leading role in applying particle technology to groundbreaking applications, particularly in the fields of battery process engineering and recycling, as well as pharmaceutical process engineering.

In front of an audience of hundreds of researchers, Yoshio Hosokawa, President of the Hosokawa Powder Technology Foundation, presented the award. Subsequently, in his award lecture “Comminution, mixing and compaction of particulate materials: Important process-structure-property functions for the production of battery electrodes and solid drug products”, he gave the audience an insight into his work on fundamental stress models and process-structure and structure-property models for describing and predicting the manufacture of pharmaceutical nanosuspensions, their processing into tablets, and the production of battery electrodes.

Japan: Prof. Arno Kwade was accompanied by over 20 other members of the Institute of Particle Technology. Photo credit: Hosokawa Powder Technology Foundation

Prof. Kwade was accompanied by over 20 other members of the Institute of Particle Technology, including Prof. Carsten Schilde, who, in the closing plenary lecture at the World Congress for Particle Technology, highlighted the use of modern simulation methods for modelling particle-based processes and products.
In addition, Finn Frankenberg and Victor Oldhues from the Institute of Particle Technology each received the award for the best presentation in their respective fields.