The FOM Prizes ceremony at Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2015
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:04
Ladies, ladies, ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention for a minute, please? This is one of the most difficult minutes of my year when you are so happily chatting
00:22
and there's this wonderful buzz and I have to interrupt you and break the atmosphere because there's work to do. First of all, welcome all, welcome our guests for tonight. I hope you have had a wonderful day, I hope you have had a wonderful evening, dinner.
00:43
We are about 2,000 tonight. This is a record for us, it's also almost a record for the amount of food that has been served in this establishment. It's a huge effort of the kitchen and I should like to start with asking you to give
01:02
them a big hand because it's fantastic, wonderful.
01:24
Then it's time for our traditional evening activity, the award of the FOM Prizes. As always, we have a very distinguished guest to hand over those prizes and this year it is no one less than the President of the Royal Academy, Hans Clevers.
01:44
Hans, I should like to ask you to the podium. You don't need an introduction, so I won't introduce you. Well, thanks very much, Nick, for this brief introduction. I must say it's very special for me to be here in FOM.
02:01
I've heard from Hans Chang and from Wim van Sierle endless stories about how special FOM is and how special the FOM meetings in Welt over are. I'm a humble biomedical scientist and I'm clearly very intimidated to be here with you. I'll be awarding the prizes, but I was asked to say a little bit about the
02:21
ongoing affairs in the national landscape. Maybe one word about Weltover. I was actually born and raised very close to here in Eindhoven and in Somme. We always thought that Weltover was the end of the world, so we would never go there. But I guess ASML and the contributions of FOM have really made Weltover into what it is nowadays.
02:49
I can say a little bit more if you want about Weltover, but maybe I shouldn't. So I've been a president of the Royal Academy for almost three years now.
03:01
And I've actually tried to combine this with being a scientist. And I've moved back and forth within my lab, early mornings, weekends, and then sort of the world in The Hague, the world of the politicians and the administrators. And in the second world, I've often felt like Alice in Wonderland.
03:20
It is a very different world from the world that we as scientists live in. And as I actually had expected and maybe feared, I do meet, and I'm not trying to accuse anybody here, but I do meet very few real scientists in the world where things are decided about us. And I guess here at Maier he has a good exception of a scientist taking on a responsibility
03:43
as an administrator. I think it's a general philosophy that in Holland that we try to have generalist administrators governing professional organizations. So this can be healthcare that they know quite well. This can be our educational system. This can be our science system.
04:01
But the scientists, the professionals, the nurses, the doctors, the teachers, tend not to be in charge of the landscape that they work in. Now, I think this has been very evident in the national science vision that was recently produced, the beta scopes VZ. I'll use a few Dutch words.
04:20
It's not always easy to translate these two. So English, it has been in the making for many months. It appeared on the 26th of November. And it contains a number of elements that are very important for our daily functioning. I think there were some elements that we as scientists really liked. The creation of a matching fund for European funds in the order of 50 million.
04:44
There were strong statements about open access publications. Again, Gerard Maier has been very active in making this possible. In the Netherlands, I guess, scientists really like open access. But they are a little bit fearful that if we are the only ones that impose it upon our scientists, we might get in trouble internationally.
05:02
But I'm sure that Gerard will take care of this very well. There is a standing committee announced that will be run by NVO to evaluate applications for large infrastructures. This must please you physicists very much because you're unusually well organized
05:23
to apply for these funds. Much better than the biologists, I must admit. But there were two aspects in the science vision that have created a great turmoil. One of them was the National Science Agenda. And I'll say a little bit about that. And the other one was the fate of NVO.
05:41
And there the Dutch word kantelen was being used. Now, kantelen is not easily translatable. I looked it up. First of all, it means to drink. That's what I remember from my younger days. In English, there is a word flip, twist, tilt, turn around, spill. This is all kantelen.
06:01
But the best word I liked is capsize. So I think we should... So when we refer to the kantelen of NVO, we mean capsizing NVO. And that's something we have to be very careful about. The Royal Academy actually opened an online podium to allow scientists to comment on what we thought
06:24
about the various parts of this science vision. And in essence, probably as many people are, we didn't comment on the good things, but there were lots of comments and lots of worries about the bad things. And this all had to do with the fear that this was going to be a top-down system.
06:42
There was to be a top-down programming of what we are going to do and a top-down organization of NVO. And Van Damme and Tilburg, I just have a few citations from that side. Van Damme from Tilburg says, it's fine for the government to stimulate thinking and creativity, but steering in a certain direction is an altogether different matter.
07:05
That was not a very positive remark. Pete Bost, who never is afraid of any strong statements, says, I don't know of any good scientist who feels there should be more control. Science needs modest administrators, preferably those that are active themselves in science
07:22
and know how discoveries are made. Beatrice de Graaf, our national terrorist expert, says, the jargon around innovation, top-sector and valorization appears to reflect a relapse to the simplistic desire of the alchemist turning stone into gold.
07:41
And then there was one unnamed scientist who remarked that as a protest to signal that the end of free science is near in Holland, Robert de Graaf should no longer appear in the world right now. So despite this, the Academy has decided, and actually together with Carl Dietrich of the United Universities,
08:03
NBO and some other organizations, to actually help write the science agenda. And we hope that we will actually, by actively participating in this process, we will have an important influence on programming our own science, and particularly, I guess, the Academy,
08:21
but also the university will fight for space for free research. So the agenda should not be plastered, the research should not be programmed entirely with, you know, divine subjects, but there should be significant space, and we're already arguing over this, there should be significant space for free research. And then maybe this agenda,
08:41
I know there are many agendas at top sector, Horizon 2020, the university profiling, but the combined agenda might actually be one that is the mother of all our research agendas, and it might actually make our lives easier because it's the only one that we really have to look at rather than all these different ones. Well then there is the other issue,
09:02
the capsizing of NBO, and there we have to be realistic, because actually there have been two evaluations of NBO in the past six years or so that have both said that there are problems in NBO, NBO needs a shake-up. There are Chinese walls between the different,
09:21
the different disciplines, FOM is obviously one of them, and it's also felt that the governments can be more effective, and that those walls have to disappear. NBO has to be a more dynamic organization. What, however, was not appreciated in the original evaluation,
09:41
individual plans for NBO, is the role that NBO plays in the national science landscape. And to clarify this, I'll try to take you back to the year 1918, and this is when Richard Holden advised the British government to let basic scientists themselves decide how to spend the science budget.
10:01
So not top-down, not bureaucrats, the scientists themselves decide who gets the money. This insight now bears its name, it's called the Holden Principle. It was the fundament of ZBO, the predecessor of NBO, and it is the Holden Principle that we are probably trying to defend in these past months
10:21
when we talk about NBO. When Alexandre Renoir-Kant accepted the academy pending last year, he spoke some very wise words about basic science, and he said, the Holden Principle has proven itself over and over. It places politicians away from decisions as to how the budget is spent,
10:41
but it does not remove their responsibility for the overall size of the science budget. So politicians should not program, they just should give us money, and we will program. That's the message of Alexandre Renoir-Kant. Then,
11:01
when I try to explain what NBO is in the landscape, the following seems to work quite well. So 80% of our research budget is given to universities. The universities spend this very wisely in a, I would say, top-down manner. It creates a very stable, high-level plateau where we can do so.
11:21
However, in the absence of NBO, we don't do very special things at our universities. It is NBO that is unruly. NBO will actually give money to young talents, to unusual science, to things that are not programmable, might not fit in the strategies of universities. And it's the tension between this extremely
11:40
well-structured, stable university system, and then the 20% of money that a scientist, in a bottom-up way, give to this system that together creates a unique system that I think is second to none in the world. Dutch science, despite the fact that we spent very little money on it, is consistently
12:00
in the top three or five countries in the world. Very surprisingly, when the scientists en masse started protesting, that is quite unusual. I think there were lots of the universities, the individual scientists, the academy, NBO, all protested against this change,
12:22
the capsizing NBO. The employers' organizations, very surprisingly, also supported this. We thought they would only support TOPS sector, they like programming, but actually they did like FOM and STB even more than they like TOPS sector. So I think it's a main reason, and it's a strength, I think it says a lot about the strength of FOM
12:42
that actually they, the employers, sided with us in our fight for the identity of NBO. I think at the moment the situation is such that we're probably no longer in danger of losing our NBO, the fear was that we would have a 15th university that
13:01
the other 14 universities could make deal with. No, now it's our NBO and we will continue to create a tension between this stable plateau of the universities and the unruly, bottom-up science of the scientists. One last thing,
13:21
in the process of writing this vision, we were often consulted, universities, we have consistently stated that we would really like a paragraph in that vision that says we're not spending so much money in Holland, we don't have the money at the moment, but the moment that the economy does better
13:41
we are going to invest in science. And very disappointingly, the Ministry has refused and if you read the text, there's not a single sentence that states that possibly in the future, Holland will spend more money on science. It's very disappointing, it's also not very smart because we have very little natural resources, we have people that we need to
14:01
educate and we have to innovate and we have to do research and that can only be done when you invest. I don't want to end on a very negative note, but I think it's very, very disappointing that our politicians do not want to make the statement that science is important and that science deserves more investments at a time
14:21
when it is possible. Now we don't want to end on a very negative note, not all of us are in financial problems, there's actually four people here that will do much better after tonight than before tonight. These are the four FOM prize winners, so I'll take you through the piece de resistance of this evening,
14:40
three prizes. The first one is the FOM Physics Thesis Award, it is a prize of 10,000 euros, awarded each year to the author of the best physics thesis, the subject of this year's thesis is fluid dynamics and in layman's terms that I can understand, it deals with how drops
15:01
of liquid evaporate, ASML is very interested in this apparently, they support this research and it actually reached the media, why do coffee stains appear the way they do? The jury launched the attractive and transparent style of writing and may I invite Hanneke Hälderblom from the University of Twente
15:21
on stage to receive the FOM Physics Thesis Award. Hanneke Hälderblom. I'm extremely happy and
15:56
honored to receive this prize and I would like to thank very much the jury and FOM for selecting me.
16:02
I also feel very lucky, not only because of this prize, but because I've been able to perform my PhD research in a very nice and inspiring environment which is the Physics of Fluids group at the University of Twente. So I would like to thank all the people that interacted with me and contributed to my thesis and most
16:20
importantly also my PhD advisors for all their support, confidence and for giving me the opportunity to work in their group. Thank you very much.
16:46
So we move on to the next prize, the FOM Valorization Chapter Prize. With this prize FOM encourages PhD students to devote a separate chapter in their thesis to the valorization of their doctoral research. It is a prize of 5,000 euros
17:01
that can be spent on anything, aims to encourage PhD students to explore possibilities to commercialize their research. The laureate of this year describes the nature of seismic movements, how these affect gravitational waves and how such noise can be filtered out. The laureate did not stop at the science,
17:21
he established a start-up company that for instance works now with Shell, a great example of how basic science and commercial application can go hand in hand. Can I invite Mark Baeck from NICAFU on stage for the Horrific Prize. Thank you.
17:45
And a photo moment. So as many of you would know writing a PhD thesis
18:01
can sometimes be rather a tedious task. And then having to write another chapter at the end of it might seem like a rather unwelcome addition. But I believe that it is important for you and for me to show the rest of the world that fundamental research is more than just amazing physics.
18:23
That it also has an added economic value for the rest of society. And I think it's great that FOM supports this through, amongst other things, this prize which I'm very pleased to accept. I'd like to thank FOM, thank NICAF and thank everybody
18:41
at the Gravitational Wave Physics Group for making my research and this prize possible. Thank you. So then the third and final award the FOM Valorization Prize 2014.
19:02
The prize is 250,000 euros. It is to encourage the utilization of knowledge from physical research. This year it goes to two of the most successful and well-known nanotechnologies in our country. And the jury report evokes an image of two Siamese twins. And we might verify it when they come on stage. Their research
19:21
bridges nanotechnology, physics, chemistry, and material sciences. The two awardees have entered an analytical method which allows the development of superconductors and other superior materials. It had already led to the start-up of two new companies. The enthusiasm of the laureates does not stop in the lab or at
19:42
the science park, as also just heard. They appear at festivals like the Black Cross Festival, which I think is somewhere in 20, yeah, where people go and go hugen, I understand. And they went to the Lowlands University. May I ask Chris Reinders and Dave Blanc to the stage.
20:19
So, wow, what a lot of people.
20:36
And, wow, it feels great to win this year's valorization prize.
20:42
And I would like to start with thanking FOM for awarding us this prize. Dave and I are really honored with this prize. I never considered this as a Siamese twin, but, okay, maybe it is like that. I also want to thank, of course, the University of Twente and Mesa Institute for Nanotechnology because I think they gave us the
21:02
possibility to do fundamental basic materials research, but always in an entrepreneurial setting. So we were happy to get spin-off companies started to collaborate with a lot of industries and still work on fundamental questions. And I have to say
21:21
this is really fun. I always like being there at the University and do this work. And I would really encourage you all to do this in this setting. But having said this, I also want to thank, of course, the members of our group within Mesa Plus because of course we are not doing all the work. Only a very limited
21:40
amount of work. But most of the work is being done by our PhD students, our master's students, our bachelor's students, and also our former students starting off these spin-off companies like Twente Solar State Technology and Soulmates. They are the real prize winners and I'm happy to share it with them. So thank you all.
22:06
So it's my turn. First I want to thank Chris, the Soulmates. We did it already for 25 years trying to giving science into products, into companies and I think
22:20
today I think it's a very nice moment to share with each other. Also the Entrepreneurial University the University of Twente and the Mesa Plus Institute and I'm very happy that David is here because he was the initiator of the Mesa Plus and we are having more than 50 spin-off companies already from the institute
22:41
thanks to Albert but also Miriam and Janneke so I think they're a very good community here. But as Chris already said, the real people are the young people who will start these spin-off companies, who got the guts to do so and hopefully also the glory afterwards.
23:01
And of course FON. This morning there were some words with Nick about how FON is going in the next future and I think, well if we are here together FON is in our heart. And if people know me then at the end of speeches I like to cheer them up
23:20
with two thumbs. So I do this experiment also in Facebook so I ask you to do two thumbs up and I make a movie out of it and I know that behind the curtains on both holes we cannot see you but we can hear you. We can hear you.
23:43
Okay, so it's now, I will take a short movie cheering for FON because it's in our heart with two thumbs up and you may stand up and you may allow to make a lot of noise. So let's start the movie now, yes!
24:01
Normally I would say we do that once again because it can be louder.
24:23
But time is not allowed. Thank you, it will be on Facebook soon. Thank you FON. Okay, with this we've reached the end of the frivolous prize ceremony. I must say as a non-physicist I am surprised at what you physicists are capable of
24:43
and I'm sure my colleagues will look at Facebook and they might do this. I'm not really sure. We have another photo moment and I guess after this Nick will introduce the serious speaker of the evening.