January - March

Excellent career perspectives for engineering science students198 Ferry-Porsche winners honored at Weissach Development Center

Stuttgart. Yesterday Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry for Education, Youth and Sport honored the 198 Ferry-Porsche winners for 2005 in a ceremony at the Weissach Development Center. Since 2001, the best high school graduates of their year from general and technical high schools in Baden-Württemberg with mathematics and physics/technology as advanced subjects have been honored with this prize. With this prize, the two partners want to strengthen the attractiveness of natural sciences and technology subjects at Baden-Württemberg high schools.

Harro Harmel, Chief Human Resources Officer at Porsche AG, congratulated the young people on their outstanding scholastic achievements and referred to the excellent career perspectives available to them in the engineering profession. Porsche itself is one of the best examples, said the Member of the Board. Currently the company is developing the four-seater sports coupe Panamera that is due to come on the market in 2009. Because of this, their development capacities have once more been considerably increased and numerous engineers hired since fall 2005. In total, the Panamera will create around 400 new positions in Zuffenhausen and Weissach alone.

Harmel explained that the newcomers could work closely together with the Porsche specialists, who have a long term professional experience and competence – for a clearly defined target. “If we want to move into a new market segment in 2009, then our automobiles must be the measuring stick the competition use for orientation. We must be better than the competition, faster and more agile than the large groups that dominate our industry today”, said Harmel in describing the sports automobile producer’s ambitious goals. The Chief Human Resources Officer advised the winners to apply for an internship position at Porsche while still studying as the company recruits the majority of its graduate professionals from its pool of interns.

Baden-Württemberg Minister for Education Helmut Rau thanked Porsche AG for its commitment to advancing these up and coming scientists and engineers. The research and development of new procedures, better products and customer-oriented services were the basis for Germany’s international competitiveness as a business location. "We must open the door to the sciences. In the future, economic success will be even more dependent on a good education and high-performance research”, the Minister for Education stressed. The large number of winners of the Ferry-Porsche Prize indicated the attractiveness of the technological and natural sciences subjects and are evidence that the subject matter for these areas of science is successfully taught at Baden-Württemberg schools.

The Ferry-Porsche Prize is named after the creator of the sports automobile of the same name and was first awarded in 2001. A highlight of this year’s ceremony was again a draw for five scholarships for internships abroad conducted by Dr. Wolfgang Porsche, shareholder and member of the Supervisory Board of Porsche AG as well as the youngest son of Ferry Porsche. The lucky winners are Johannes Bürkle (Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium, Stuttgart), Sandra Kallähn (Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium, Laichingen), Manuel Kambeitz (Max-Planck-Gymnasium, Karlsruhe), Markus Mack (Georg-Büchner Gymnasium, Winnenden) and Christopher Sarter (Hohenstaufen-Gymnasium, Eberbach).

The winners have the opportunity to complete a month-long internship at one of the sports automobile producer’s subsidiaries abroad in the summer of 2006.

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15.02.2006