Daily Image

27-06-2014
PreviousNext
Click here or on the picture for a full size image.

So close...

Submitter: Jan Noordam
Description: On 25 June, the Christiaan Huygens Science Prize 2014 was awarded in the category Information and Communication Technology. The four young finalists had been selected on the basis of their recent PhD thesis, in a gruelling process of elimination. We are very proud that our own Stefan Wijnholds was one of them, with his thesis Fish-Eye Observing with Phased Array Radio Telescopes (Delft 2010, Cum Laude, as is his habit).

The picture shows the 4 contenders being interviewed by Maarten Huygen, a prominent journalist. In the end, the winner was Dr Bart Jansen (left, eclipsing the picture of Huygens), for his thesis The Power of Data Reduction: Kernels for Fundamental Graph Problems. The others were Dr Alexandra Silva (Kleene Coalgebra), Dr Jacopo Urbani (On Web-scale Reasoning), and of course Stefan. The winner got 10.000 Euro, and all four were given a prestiguous certificate and a tasteful objet d'art. The inset shows Stefan, flanked by his proud thesis supervisors, Prof Alle-Jan van der Veen (Delft) and Dr Jaap Bregman (ASTRON).

In the various speeches, ASTRON and LOFAR/SKA got quite a bit of glowing exposure, which was not lost on Dr Jet Bussemaker, the Minister of Education. Part of the praise came from Stefan himself, who emphasized that there are "at least 50" people at ASTRON with whom he can discuss his subject(s).

Apart from being promising young scientists, all 4 finalists were remarkably eloquent, saying sensible things about the best conditions for scientific success. And they were savvy enough not to be lured into commenting on national science policy. They will go far, just like their predecessors.
Copyright: Madroon Community Consultants (MCC)
 
  Follow us on Twitter
Please feel free to submit an image using the Submit page.