EurAgEng Recognition Award

2023

Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Prankl was honoured for his achievements in European agricultural engineering.

The European Association of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng) honoured Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Prankl with the Recognition Award at the international conference LAND.TECHNIK-AgEng on November 10, 2023 in Hanover. 

Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Prankl is Head of Research at the Francisco Josephinum Federal Institute of Higher Education and Research and Managing Director of Josephinum Research in Wieselburg, Austria. He comes from an agricultural background and is a graduate of the agricultural engineering department at the Francisco Josephinum. He passed his final exams in 1982 under Hofrat Schrottmaier and went on to study electrotechnology/electrical power engineering at the Vienna University of Technology. From 1988 to 1989 he gained experience at the company Elin AG in Vienna until he joined the Federal Institute for Agricultural Engineering (BLT) in 1989.

In the same year, he was assigned to head the "Products from renewable raw materials" department. He has been Deputy Director of the Josephinum since 2010. In the same year, he founded Josephinum Research, an institution with partial legal capacity that manages funded research projects in cooperation with industry. Important research topics include precision farming, digitalization in agriculture, electric drives, sensor technology as well as data and information management. 

Since the founding of the Agricultural Engineering and Technologies Group (AET) as part of the EU technology platform ManuFUTURE in 2005, Heinrich Prankl has been intensively involved in supporting the agricultural engineering community in acquiring EU research and development funding. In the AET, Heinrich Prankl headed the "Bioenergy and Renewable Resources" expert group. In this position, he was a pioneer in the decarbonization of agriculture.

Due to his expertise and knowledge of the European research landscape, Heinrich Prankl was appointed a member of the Agritechnica International Innovation Commission. The committee is responsible for evaluating innovations and for recognizing them at Agritechnica.

The European Society of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng) honours Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Prankl is an innovative pioneer and interdisciplinary networker of application-oriented agricultural engineering research, who has earned high recognition in the agricultural engineering community for his competence and expertise.

2021

Due to the huge efforts to make this first virtual AgEng event a success and having to endure the postponement of the 2020 date due to related administrative and organisation issues, The EurAgEng presidents awarded Fátima Baptista and her team with the recognition award.

Dr William Day of Hexham, Northumberland received a EurAgEng Recognition Award for his work in developing, promoting and expanding ‘Biosystems Engineering’, the official Scientific Journal of EurAgEng.

William became Editor in Chief of the Journal in 2007 and since then encouraged submissions such that the Journal now receives over 1200 submissions a year. This has enabled the Biosystems Engineering journal to maintain an extremely high standard and improve its international standing. The journal’s Impact Factor, which is used by many to indicate quality, has increased during Bill’s period in charge from less than 1 to 3.215. Now that William is retiring from the Editorship, with this award EurAgEng wants to thank him for his efforts in expanding and developing the readership, quality and standing of Biosystems Engineering internationally.

Dr Reiter played a key role in the setup and successful roll-out of decision structures in both VDMA, Landtechnik, the largest European association of the agricultural engineering industry and CEMA, the European association of the agricultural machinery industry. In VDMA he supported actively the set of a technical board to facilitate the collaboration between tractor and implement manufacturers on technical topics in the industry. For CEMA he was the first chairman of the new technical board, structured with senior industry leaders that could take decisive actions on complex technical matters. For 6 years he formed the fundaments that lead to moving from a reactive to a proactive approach, to avoid costly, not effective nor efficient legislation and policies on safety and health, the environment and climate change, and make it fit for the whole agricultural sector. His leadership and support were also instrumental to build the international Agricultural Electronics Industry Foundation AEF in 2008. Today AEF is seen as a unique project, a fundament to build fully connected agriculture and to solve the many technical challenges related to it.

Dr.-Ing. Heribert Reiter with his large technical background on agricultural machinery and his family heritage of farming has always been thinking and articulating in a national and international forum with the eyes and the interest of the customers of agricultural machinery.  He is a true leader of the European agricultural industry. 

Adam Dubowski

Since 1981 Adam has worked at PIMR, the Industrial Institute of Agricultural Engineering, in Poland, with a string of agricultural innovations to his name. But EurAgEng would like to recognise the enthusiasm and diligence with which he conducts his role as National Society contact. Adam can be relied on to keep details of Polish members up to date as well as providing the Secretariat with interesting material and feedback on activities. 

Hannu Haapala

Haanu is a well travelled agricultural and forestry engineer from Finland who is currently the CEO of ProAgria. He specializes in new technologies and innovations and served EurAgEng for many years not only as his country’s Council representative but also as Chairman of ENGAGE, the network of co-operating research institutes in the fields of agricultural, biosystems and environmental engineering which also acts as a strategic division of EurAgEng. During his time in the chair he led a project to produce material for the website about the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering profession. 

Steve Parkin

Steve has worn many hats during his career but currently as Managing Editor of Biosystems Engineering, the official journal of EurAgEng, he has had a significant part to play in raising the profile of the Journal, modernising its systems and raising the Impact Factor in conjunction with his colleagues and the publishers, Elsevier! He has been a regular presence at both AgEng and Land.Technik conferences, meeting and advising authors and reviewers and promoting the Journal. We hope he will be at many more to come! 

Morten Dam Rasmussen

EurAgEng would also like to thank the person and his entire team who are responsible for bringing about CIGR AgEng 2106. Without Morten dam Rasmussen, we would not have enjoyed the Danish hospitality and another successful and well run conference this week.

Demetres Briassoulis from Greece, 

Ettore Gasparetto of Italy, 

Peter Pickel from Germany, and

past President and organiser of the conference, Florentino Juste of Spain,

were all honoured with the Society’s Recognition Award for their efforts in leading and promoting EurAgEng.