Jens Eichler

Background

About Jens Eichler

Research and innovation culture are my passions in my 20+ years as a scientist & engineer, research & development manager and leader of innovative global cross divisional/cross functional teams. The foundation is my materials science background which I have now applied to solve critical challenges in many innovative application fields like hydrogen economy, automotive electrification, additive manufacturing, thermal management and applications of ceramic materials in various industries. In my 10+ years at 3M collaborations with other 3M scientists helped to combine my key technical expertise in ceramics and additive manufacturing with many of the other 49 core technologies resulting in differentiated solutions. In recent years I changed perspective to dive deep into understanding the challenges in the application fields starting from a system level and breaking it down into innovative solutions on a component and material level. Outside collaborations with universities and institute partners as well as my active participation in the scientific community completes the holistic view on how science can be applied to life. I served as the 15%-culture committee chair at 3M. In this role I helped to promote this important element of our 3M culture globally. What started with Richard Drew almost 100 years ago and has been actively promoted at 3M as free innovative time since the 1940s is still very much an active element to help drive new innovation at 3M. Currently we are actively pursuing new ways to connect the challenges of our application industries with the collaborative element of 15%-culture to help make the unexpected connections.