Finalists Ben Feringa Impact Award 2025 announced

On Tuesday 13 May 2025, the annual Ben Feringa Impact Award will be presented. With this award, the University of Groningen honours the unique achievements of its researchers and students in the field of knowledge utilisation. Knowledge utilisation is understood as the linking of scientific research to professional (non-academic) and/or societal (including economic) practice. Ben Feringa himself will also present the award this year to the winning researchers and students.

The award

The award will be presented in two categories: researchers and students. For each category, one award winner or prize-winning team will be declared during the ceremony. The winning project in the student category will receive a prize of € 2500 to spend freely. This amount will be financed by the Ubbo Emmius Fund. The winning project in the researchers category will receive a prize of € 5000 to be spent on further knowledge utilisation, made possible by the Board of the University.

The finalists

Student category:

• ‘Phone Masking Augmentation for Automatic Recognition of Whispered Speech’ - by Igor Marchenko (Campus Fryslân)

• ‘Improving Human-AI Decision-Making in healthcare: A Computational Theory of Mind approach’ - by Andra Cristiana Minculescu (Faculty of Science & Engineering)

• ‘Collective Memory Dialogue maps’ - by Makke Marij Bakker, Annika Zweep, Adriaan Beelaerts van Blokland & Lisette Kamping (Faculty of Philosophy)

Category researchers:

• ‘Rubber Recycling’ - by Francesco Picchioni (Faculty of Science & Engineering)

• ‘Participatory approaches to improve health in low socioeconomic status communities’ - by Tim van Zutphen (Campus Fryslân)

• ‘Demonstratierecht.nl’ - by Berend Roorda and Noor Swart (Faculty of Law)

The entries were assessed by a selection committee consisting of RUG scientists, RUG students and staff from external cooperation partners. This year, the jury consists of: Erik Frijlink (UMCG/FMW/FSE), Joost van Egmond (Science Journalist, Trouw), Marijke Leliveld (FEB), Mateo Bril (Studentassessor CvB), Mladen Popovic (FRC&M) and Nienke Homan (President KNVCI).

This year's presentation of the Ben Feringa Impact Award will take place at the House of Connections. Ceciel Nieuwenhout (Faculty of Law) will be the chairman of the day and Dr Defne Abur (Faculty of Arts) will provide a keynote.

For questions or more information about the Ben Feringa Impact Award, please feel free to contact bfimpactaward@rug.nl