Sabine Denis with the University of Lorraine, Institut Jean Lamour, will be awarded the IFHTSE Medal for her lifetime achievements in numerical modeling of the interplay of temperature, chemistry, and residual stress in heat treatment, in particular the importance of deformation and transformation plasticity.
Denis is Emeritus Professor of the Microstructures and Stresses Group at the Institut Jean Lamour. She has more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, and more than 3,000 citations for her work in modeling and simulation of phase transformations and residual stresses.
The IFHTSE medal is awarded for internationally recognized distinguished achievements in heat treatment and surface engineering. These may equally be seminal scientific findings or innovative breakthroughs in the industry, which are widely published and cited.
The medals are provided by SC Plasmaterm SA, Romania.
Yoichi Watanabe to be awarded IFHTSE Fellow
Yoichi Watanabe, vice president of JSHT and president of Nihon Parkerizing Co., Ltd. will be awarded the IFHTSE Fellow in recognition of his groundbreaking research on surface hardening and quenching distortion and for his year-long support of IFHTSE World Congresses and conferences as committee member and speaker.
Watanabe will be giving a plenary lecture at the 30th World Congress in Suzhou on “The Current Status and Prospects of Surface Heat Treatment Technologies Utilizing Nitrogen Effectively.”
The IFHTSE Fellowship recognizes individuals active in IFHTSE events or groups who have made outstanding and significant contributions to the development of heat treatment or surface engineering.
The IFHTSE Fellow Award is sponsored by Quaker Houghton, Inc., in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.
Conference Updates
30th IFHTSE World Congress
Suzhou, China | August 19-22, 2025
The 30th IFHTSE World Congress is sponsored by the Chinese Heat Treatment Society (CHTS) and follows the 25th World Congress in Xi’an in 2018.
The event will be at the Suzhou Shishan International Conference Center, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China.
The long-historic friendship between CHTS and the IFHTSE already has led to successful cooperation on several significant events, such as the 3rd international congress on heat treatment of materials, which was in Shanghai in 1983, the 14th IFHTSE congress (Shanghai, 2004), the 20th IFHTSE congress (Beijing, 2012), the 25th IFHTSE congress (Xi’an, 2018), and the 2nd International Conferences on Energy and the Future of Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering (Beijing, 2014).
This World Congress will be focused on the organization of a congress that will deal with tradition and innovation in heat treatment and surface engineering. The 30th IFHTSE World Congress will be a good opportunity for the delegates from a wide range of industrial and academic backgrounds to discuss and disseminate the recent progress, innovations, and developments in the field of heat treatment and surface engineering.
31st IFHTSE World Congress
Cologne, Germany | October 13, 2026
Organized by AWT – Arbeitsgemeinschaft Wärmebehandlung + Werkstofftechnik e. V. – more information on the 31st IFHTSE World Congress will be provided when it becomes available.
