Ask for my testimony for blog of memory of Ellis Gartner

Hello Gartner family,

I was so shocked and deeply sad to get the bad news last month. And I apologize to not be able to participate the ceremony.

As PhD student at Lafarge, I have passed three wonderful years with Ellis Gartner. Without him, I would have never entered into cement industry. His knowledge, intelligence, curiosity and patience as my thesis supervisor as well as his humor, passion to birds and empathies to the others in the life, will be always the reference of my professional and private life. All the memories of having delicious Japanese food in your house, hiking in the mountain around Lyon, feeding your birds 'vio' and 'lin', etc, will always stay in my brain.

I got the new year wish from him in December and I proposed him to see each other in German. However, he suddenly passed always. Even I was not able to come but I will be always the friend of your family. I will let you know when I will be Lyon next time.

Best regards

Jia Wang

Thank you, Ellis !

Dear Ellis,

I have the pleasure and the honour to work with you at LCR during 3 years.

Your passion for science, as your ability to mentor and develop others, were two sides of you that I always admired, the same way that I particularly enjoyed you very English sense of humour.

This sense of humour was a great contribution to the team. The same way that, being the only non-native French speakers in the team, we tried to drive the EdD to conduct the meetings in English. We never won that battle, but we made tremendous progress.

And as all my memories of you bring that humour component within, I've chosen this picture of an enjoyable evening where a group of friends gather to thank you and wish you all the best in a new phase of your life. 

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Ellis, Thanks for those memories, that I will cherish forever.

And as I believe that from here in Argentina, I won't have a chance to do it personally, let me express my deepest condolences to your family. Even in pain, they have, as we all, many reasons to be proud of you.

Carlos Espina