Students of faculty do well in Young Talent prizes

The faculty and university of Groningen will be very well represented at the annual ceremony for the Young Talent Prizes 2009 on 25 November in Haarlem. In addition to four encouragement prizes of € 500 each for the second-year students Jan Posma (Computing Science), Leny Sprik (Life Science & Technology), Tim van der Beek (Physics and Applied Physics) and Christiaan Douma (Mathematics and Applied Mathematics), Sander Land will be presented with the M&I/Partners Information Thesis Prize of € 5000 for Computing Science and Information Science.

Sander Land has been awarded the prize for his thesis about a system to recognize photos of skin ailments and find them in an extensive database. Sander developed the system for dermatologists at the UMCG. In 2005 he won a Young Talent encouragement prize.

On 25 November, at the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities in Haarlem, a total of 40 encouragement prizes will be presented to young talented students of the technical and exact sciences. Their average score in the first year was 8.9.
The prizes have been donated by a number of Spinoza Prizewinners and the Platform Bèta Techniek, the Stichting Physica and the Thomas Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics. Their aim is to stimulate the study of technical and exact sciences. In addition, this year the Kartini Prize of € 1250 will be presented for the third time to the best female ethnic minority student of the exact sciences. The prize has been awarded to Loubna Aammari of Delft University of Technology.

Further, three organizations (M&I/Partners, Solvay Pharmaceuticals and Corus) have sponsored three graduation prizes, each of € 5000. These have gone to Sander Land, Saskia Nijmeijer (VU University Amsterdam) and Ted Oijevaar (University of Twente).

Important criteria for the graduation prizes are an innovative character, the theoretical underpinning and the social impact. Every year, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities in Haarlem organizes the independent judging and the prize-giving ceremony. There will be more Young Talent prizes to be won next year.