TU/e has a Graduation Award, a Design Award, a Dissertation Prize and a special Societal Impact Award. This is a prize of five thousand euros for the project holding the greatest future prospects for society. Competitors for the prize need to be nominated by a professor or the dean of the Department. Each dean subsequently selects a nomination that is submitted with the jury. The Departmental Selection Committee has an advisory role here. Nominees are notified by the Program Director. After this the Office of Doctoral Presentations and Academic Ceremonies asks for a presentation poster. These posters are put up in the hall of the Hoofdgebouw from mid-May until early June. This year’s winners will be announced on 3 June.

Other prizes
“Mostly professors and other members of the scientific staff draw students’ attention to competitions and nominate them if they may qualify for an award”, says prof. dr. ir. René de Borst, dean of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Prof. dr. ir. Ton Backx, professor at Electrical Engineering: “The professors and senior staff members receive invitations for nominating candidates for the various prizes. So the best thing students can do is contact their supervisor/professor to get an overview of the competitions that may be interesting for them.”

Information about the many thesis prizes presented by various companies is available from the Education and Student Service Center (STU).

“In addition to these prizes, there are best paper and best poster awards for doctoral candidates in particular. These prizes are awarded to the person stated as first author on the paper/poster which has been selected as the best one by a committee specially designated for this per conference and consisting of scientists”, De Borst explains.

Prof. dr. ir. Richard van de Sanden from the Applied Physics Department talks about the prizes given out at conferences, for instance during the AVS conference in San Jose, California. “As a group we scored very well on this in the past.” He also mentions the prizes of the Material Research Society. “M2i, the Materials Innovation Institute, and the Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI) where we have projects, also award poster prizes.”

The IE & IS Department has a prizes committee that features representatives from different Departments. They make their selection for theses prizes from among others the theses that passed with a score of 7.5 or higher, for instance those from NIVE, the Dutch Management Association.

“ TU/e will also have a Marina van Damme prize as of this year”, says Van de Sanden. Van Damme (78) studied in Delft and was the first female PhD from the University of Twente. She has made fifty thousand euros available to the Eindhoven University Foundation (UFe) which is intended to enable the foundation for the next five years to award a prize also to female scientific talents at TU/e. WISE, the TU/e network for women in science, will be taking care of the procedural and intrinsic fleshing out of the prize./.

More information can be found on: www.tue/nl > Services > Office for Doctoral Presentations and Academic Ceremonies > Academic Annual Awards.

Who have recently won prizes?

Last year ir. Bas Groenendaal, who graduated from Industrial Design, won the TU/e Prospects Prize for his ‘Scope’: a round camera with a rectangular hole in it, intended to help children suffering from a trauma. Because of the hole, for instance, you cannot hide behind the camera and cannot avoid making contact with the person or persons that you are photographing.


Dr. ir. Hans Winands of the Electrical Engineering Department won the Dissertation Prize for his dissertation entitled: ‘Efficient Streamer Plasma Generation’. Winands obtained his PhD for a new technique for the purification of gases and air by means of ultrashort electric discharges, so-called ‘streamers’. Utilizing a working prototype he demonstrated that this is a useful method for removing sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, odors and tar from gases.

Dr. ir. Hans Winands

Doctoral candidate Bram Hoex, from the Applied Physics Department, received several awards. Together with his research group he received the Leverhulme Technology Transfer Award 2009 because he has transferred the technique for a new kind of solar cell to OTB Solar. This enterprise, which makes machines for solar cells, is now successfully applying this technique. Earlier this year Hoex already received the Solarworld Junior Einstein Award from the solar energy company SolarWorld.


Bram Hoex

At the Mechanical Engineering Department they are also regularly among the winners. Early in March the TU/e robot football team Tech United won the first prize in the qualification for the World Championship 2009 in Graz in Austria, which will take place from 29 June to 5 July. In 2009 they ended first at the European Championship and second at the World Championship.

And one of the Bachelors, Tim van Amstel, won the Shell BaMa thesis prize with his thesis on ‘The applicability of rapeseed oil as a biological lubricant’.