Looking back at a succesfull Scientific Meeting

On the 28th of January, another successful Scientific Meeting took place organized by the Groningen Engineering Center (GEC) in collaboration with the Groningen Engineering Business Center (GEBC). This annual event serves as a discussion platform in the field of engineering between researchers of the University of Groningen and companies that are located in the Northern Netherlands.

The poster session in which 4th year PhD students presented their research was an invaluable opportunity for discussions and exploring new ideas. The keynote speakers prof. Nico Verdonschot (Radboud University and Twente University) and dr. Thijs de Groot (Nouryon Industrial Chemicals and Eindhoven University of Technology) delivered very inspiring lectures in two different engineering fields. The lecture from Prof. Verdonschot with the title of ‘Computer simulations of patients with pathologies of the musculoskeletal system in the lower extremity’ shined light on the recent innovations in combining dynamic imaging with computer simulations. Dr de Groot’s lecture with the title ‘Towards largescale green hydrogen’ covered one of the hottest topics in the transition to green energy.  

The last part of the program, the parallel sessions, focused on the organization of student projects. Four different student projects were discussed from the perspectives of the three stakeholders involved. The student, the project daily supervisor and the educational program each discussed separate aspects of the conduction of a research project at a company.

During the award ceremony, Taraneh Mokabber of the Advanced Production Engineering-group of ENTEG won the best PhD poster award for her research on advanced antimicrobial silver-containing calcium phosphate coatings. Artem Shulga received the best PhD Engineering thesis award. Artem Shulga, now CEO of QDI Systems and former PhD student of the Photophysics & OptoElectronics group at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, was awarded with the Award for his dissertation "Colloidal Quantum Dot Field-Effect Transistors - From Electronic Circuits to Light Emission and Detection" (supervisors Prof. M.A. Loi and Prof. J. Ye). Artem recently gave an interview on his entrepreneurial journey starting up QDI Systems. The full story can be read here

The event ended with a Meet and Greet which was a great opportunity for networking and spirited conversations between the science and industry attendees.