Data protection

DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V.
Theodor-Heuss-Allee 25, D-60486 Frankfurt am Main
Tel: +49 69 7564-0
E-Mail:
VR-Nr.: VR 5293 (Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main)
Executive director: Dr. Andreas Förster

Dr. Ulrich Westhaus, DECHEMA e.V.
Theodor-Heuss-Allee 25, D-60486 Frankfurt am Main
Tel: +49 69 7564-229
E-Mail:

We collect your personal data if you use our services, e.g. if you attend one of our events, committee meetings or training courses, have registered for one of our newsletters or have contacted us by telephone, e-mail or as part of a personal contact (e.g. at a trade fair or other event).

In detail the following types of data are processed:

• Name, E-Mail address
• Private address, company address, postal address, telephone numbers
• If you are a DECHEMA member: membership number and if applicable bank account
• Profile of interests, committee memberships, participation in research projects coordinated or managed by us
• Attended congresses, events and committee meetings
• IT usage data (IP-address, visited websites, date and time of connection)

Data from children:

In the context of our DECHEMAX pupil competition we collect and store the contact data of the respective competition participants. These will be managed separately from all other data processing of the DECHEMA Group and will be deleted after the end of each competition. The contact data will also not be used for other purposes or passed on to third parties.

• You yourself inform us about these data, when you register to use our services
• If you are DECHEMA member: from your membership application
• If you attend at one of our congresses, events or committee meetings
• If you submit an entry for an event organized by us
• If you have registered for our newsletter
• If you are involved in a research project coordinated or managed by DECHEMA
• In some cases we also receive your contact data from external cooperation partners or from publicly accessible directories
• When you are using our internet services pseudonymised usage data associated with IP-addresses are generated

Performance of a contract (Art. 6.1b of the EU-GDPR):

Usually you have a business relationship with us (current contract) or data processing is necessary on your request to carry out pre-contractual actions, for example:

• For execution of contractual relationships, e.g. booked conferences and for invoicing the services received
• To collect your annual membership fee, if you are a DECHEMA member and have authorized DECHEMA to do so by SEPA direct debit mandate

Due to legal requirements (Art. 6.1c of the EU-GDPR):

As a company, we are subject to numerous tax and commercial law regulations. To comply with these regulations, we must process and store your data.

On the basis of your informed consent (Art. 6.1a of the EU-GDPR):

In some cases you have given us your informed consent to process your data, e.g. if you have subscribed to our newsletter. You can revoke this consent at any time. This also applies to consents that you gave us before the EU-GDPR came into force, i.e. before 25th of May 2018.

To fulfill your wishes and to improve our offers based on a balance of interests (Art. 6.1f of the EU-GDPR):

• For information on events or publications of the DECHEMA Group which are thematically related to your profile of interest.
• To ensure orderly operation and to optimize our services: We monitor the use of our services to ensure capacity utilization and IT security. This is done on the basis of IP addresses. We do not match IP addresses to your user account.

For the storage duration of your data different time limits apply:

• Data having fiscal relevance are usually stored for 10 years
• Data with commercial law relevance are usually stored for 6 years
• Conference history: as long as you maintain your account to use our services or at least 10 years
• Usage data such as connection history (pseudonymized over IP address): 1 year

Within the complete DECHEMA Group (DECHEMA e.V., DECHEMA Research Institute, DECHEMA Ausstellungs-GmbH) we use your data to inform you about services and products that fit your needs. We guarantee that we will always process your personal data in accordance with the provisions of the applicable data protection laws. You should be aware of the fact that you can object to the analysis or use of your personal data for these purposes at any time.

We are using a number of external service providers and also cloud service providers to help us to deliver our event and IT services. These are for example the Lombego Systems GmbH with the conference management system Converia or the Newsletter2Go GmbH with its newsletter tool of the same name. All of these service providers have been carefully selected by us and contractually committed to the careful observance of all relevant data protection regulations. At the same time, of course, we only pass on the minimum amount of data required to use these services.

If we perform an event together with an external organizer, we pass all relevant data to the external organizer in order to carry out the event. If you take part in an event from a series of events with (in most cases international) changing organizers, we will normally pass your contact data to the next organizer of this event series, except you have objected to the disclosure of your data when registering for this event.

If you are a member of DECHEMA or one of its associated networks, we may pass your address data to external (journal) publishers, which cooperate with us. These will then (free of charge) send you publications from the respective publishing program that match your interest profile.

In some places of our website you can contribute within forums or register into catalogs. These contributions to our forums and/or catalogs are accessible for everyone. Therefore one should examine a contribution carefully before the publication whether it not contains data, which are not intended for the public. One must assume that Internet search machines view those contributions. Therefore this contribution may be world-wide accessible without visiting the DECHEMA website initially. In case of foreign operators the deletion or correction of such entries often cannot be accomplished.

If you are a DECHEMA member or a member of one of our committees or projects, other DECHEMA members or members of your committee or project usually can view your contact details in order to get in touch with you personally. This corresponds to DECHEMA's statutory purpose to promote the exchange of information and experience at all levels.

If you submit a research proposal (e.g. AIF grant proposal), apply for a scholarship (e.g. Max-Buchner-Research-Foundation) or are nominated for an award or prize (e.g. DECHEMA Student Award), your data may be passed on to external reviewers in accordance with the respective funding regulations. In such a case external reviewers are obliged by us both to protect your intellectual property rights and also to maintain strict confidentiality of the personal data associated with the submission of your application.

We use various software tools and thus service providers to conduct telephone conferences, online meetings, video conferences and/or web seminars (hereinafter: "Online Meetings"). These can be, for example, Zoom or WebEx.

Note: If you access the Internet site of the respective service provider, the respective service pro-vider is responsible for data processing. In most cases, it is only necessary to call up the service provider's website in order to download the respective online meeting software. You can also use the online meeting software if you enter the respective meeting ID and, if necessary, additional access data for the meeting directly in the software. If you do not want to or cannot use the respec-tive software, the basic functions can usually also be used via a browser version, which you can usually also find on the service provider's website.

The service provider of the online meeting software used in each case necessarily obtains knowledge of the meeting and any meta-data that may arise.

In addition to the types of data already mentioned above, the following data may be generated dur-ing online meetings:

For recordings (optional): file of all video, audio and presentation recordings, file of all audio recordings, text file of the online meeting chat.

When dialing in by phone: information on incoming and outgoing phone number, country name, start and end time. If necessary, further connection data such as the IP address of the device can be saved.

Text-, Audio- and video data: You may be able to use chat, question or survey functions in an "online meeting". To this extent, the text entries you make are processed in order to display and, if necessary, log them in the "online meeting". In order to enable the display of video and the playback of audio, the data from the microphone of your terminal device and from any video camera of the terminal device will be processed for the duration of the meeting. You can turn off or mute the camera or microphone yourself at any time using the online meeting software.

If we want to record "online meetings", we will inform you transparently in advance and - if necessary - ask for your consent. The fact of the recording will also be displayed in the online meeting software. Please note that a recording of any other kind by other participants or third parties can neither be technically prevented nor excluded during online meetings.

If it is necessary for the purpose of logging the results of an online meeting, we will log the chat content. However, this will usually not be the case.

In the case of web seminars, we may also process the questions asked by web seminar participants for the purposes of recording and follow-up of web seminars.

If you are registered as a user with the respective service provider of the online meeting software, reports on "online meetings" (meeting meta data, telephone dial-in data, questions and answers in web seminars, survey function in web seminars) can be stored for longer periods of time with the respective service provider. Such storage is subject to the privacy policy of the respective service provider.

The possibility of software-based "attention tracking", which is partly available in "online meeting" tools, is not used by us and is deactivated.

Cookies are small text files that are sent to your computer when you use our website. We use cookies exclusively to implement special user functions (so-called session cookies). In some cases, therefore, you may not be able to use our websites as intended without cookies. However, we do not use cookies to create user profiles.

When visiting our pages for the first time, you must either agree to the use of cookies once or you can refuse the use of cookies. You can change your decision at any time by clicking on the "Cookies" button at the bottom right.