Laureate HYSA

Dr J. Poort is a post-doctoral researcher at The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for neural circuits and behaviour at the Faculty of Life Sciences, University College London. He received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science 2016 for his research on how our brains take rapid decisions by concentrating on the most important information available.
Jasper Poort studied psychology at Leiden University and cognitive neurosciences at Radboud University Nijmegen. He completed his PhD in 2012 at VU University Amsterdam for research that he had conducted at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, an Academy institute.
Poort’s work concerns a question that intrigues many cognitive scientists: how do our brains manage to process vast amounts of sensory input at lightning speed when deciding on a course of action? How is it that we can move safely from A to B through crowded streets full of buildings, billboards, traffic signs and other people and vehicles? How does the brain manage to focus on the most crucial input and ignore the rest? How do nerve cells and regions of the brain cope with the unending flood of information all around them?
Jasper Poort has published in such prestigious journals as Neuron and is the recipient of both an NWO VENI grant, an EU Marie Curie research grant and a UCL Excellence Fellowship grant. He is eager to discuss his work with non-scientists as well. For example, he has cooperated on the Dutch ‘Canon of Science’ and gives public lectures on brain research.

Article
— Interview with Jasper Poort in De Groene Amsterdammer (Dutch)

Video

Dr C.R. Berkers is a research group leader at Utrecht University’s Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research. She received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2014 for her research into the workings of the proteasome, a structure that breaks down proteins in biological cells.
Chemist Celia Berkers did research at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam before obtaining her PhD in 2010 at Leiden University.
Since 2013, Berkers has headed a group at the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research that studies interactions between medicines and the ‘metabolome’, i.e. all the small molecules in the cell and their interactions.
Her work may help us develop new drugs against various diseases. Berkers received a Rubicon Fellowship from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in 2011. In 2013, that same organisation awarded her a Veni Grant.

QUOTE
‘Even as a child I wanted to find “a cure for cancer”, and that desire has stayed with me. I want to understand what goes wrong in sick cells at the molecular level, and why some medicines work while others don’t.’

Dr A.P.J. Vlaar is a postdoctoral researcher for the Laboratory of Experimental Intensive Care and Anaesthesiology at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. He received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Medicine 2014 for his research into acute lung injury as a serious side effect of blood transfusions in IC patients.
Alexander Vlaar, a practising physician, received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2010 for his research into acute lung injury, a potentially fatal side effect of blood transfusions given to intensive care patients. He confirmed that the risk of acute lung injury is increased by the presence of donor antibodies in transfusion products.
Vlaar’s work has helped lower the risk for IC patients. The jury has praised Vlaar’s ability to combine hospital practice and outstanding research. In 2013, he was awarded a Veni Grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

QUOTE
‘I want to improve patient care. Sometimes that means introducing new medical treatments. But sometimes it also means abandoning widely used treatments that the latest research has shown to be ineffective.’

Dr I. van Renswoude is a postdoctoral researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands in The Hague. She received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for History 2014 for her study of the classical tradition of free speech and the processes of transformation by which it was transmitted to the Middle Ages.
Irene van Renswoude studied free speech in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages at the Research Institute for History and Culture at Utrecht University. Her 2011 thesis dispelled theories that such ideals as rhetoric, honesty and criticism of the ruling class had disappeared at the end of Roman civilisation. She showed that the Middle Ages had dissidents as well. They were not philosophers, as in the latter days of Rome, but rather religious luminaries who cared just as little for wealth and power.
Today, Van Renswoude studies public debate in the Middle Ages at the Huygens ING Institute. In 2012, she won a prize from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation.

QUOTE
‘It’s very important to venture outside the boundaries of your own discipline. We can learn a lot by opening ourselves up to ideas in other disciplines. There’s nothing as enriching as dialogue.’

Dr R. Middag is a lecturer in Chemical Oceanography for the Department of Chemistry at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Environmental Sciences 2014 for his highly productive research into trace metals in the world’s oceans.
Biologist Rob Middag obtained his PhD at the University of Groningen in 2010 for his research into the impact of two trace elements (aluminium and manganese) on oceanic algae growth. He carried out his research at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) at Den Hoorn (Netherlands).
Middag subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California before moving to a world-class oceanography institute in New Zealand. His field expeditions have quadrupled the global body of data on oceanic trace elements in just a few years.

QUOTE
‘My ultimate dream is to analyse the entire composition of ocean water, including substances that are present only in very minute concentrations, and then be able to unravel the interactions between all these components.’

Dr M. Vinck is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, part of Yale University’s School of Medicine (New Haven, USA). He received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science 2014 for his research into the role of electrical oscillation in cognitive processes.
Martin Vinck obtained his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2013, for his work on the relationship between electrical oscillations in brain cells and cognitive processes such as perception, memory and decision-making. He developed new mathematical methodologies that are now being applied by other researchers.
At Yale, Vinck is currently using oscillation techniques to study how cells in the primary visual cortex influence one another.
In 2013, Vinck was awarded a Rubicon Fellowship from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. He has also received Elsevier’s Scopus Young Researcher Award in the Life Sciences category.

QUOTE
‘I’m driven by the desire to discover patterns and sequences in complex data sets. There is a lot of beauty in the solutions that nature has come up with.’

Geert van den Bogaart received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2012 for his research on cell biology problems.
Dr Van den Bogaart received his PhD cum laude for his study on the mobility of bio-molecules; he has continued his work at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen. He recently received an appointment as a junior group leader at the Nijmegen Centre for Molecular Life Sciences. According to the jury, Dr Van den Bogaart combines cell biology, microscopy, and insights from physics in a unique manner. The jury speaks of him as an exceptionally talented young researcher with a unique combination of different types of scientific expertise.

Article
— Interview with Geert van den Bogaart in Akademie Nieuws (in Dutch)

Linda van Laake received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Medicine 2012 for her research on regeneration of the heart with embryonic stem cells.
She is carrying out her innovative research at the Hubrecht Institute and Utrecht University Medical Centre. After taking her PhD, Dr Van Laake was awarded an ICIN fellowship for postdoctoral work at the Gladstone Institute at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She then commenced clinical training in cardiology and also began work with her own research group, supported by a VENI scholarship awarded by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw). The jury praises Dr Van Laake highly as one of the few young medical specialists who succeed in combining clinical work with basic scientific research, referring also to her perseverance and creativity.

Article
— Interview with Linda van Laake in Akademie Nieuws (in Dutch)

The sociologist and historian Dr Uğur Ümit Üngör received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for History 2012 for his historical-sociological research on mass violence, nationalism, and the creation of states.
Dr Üngör has already received a number of prizes for his PhD research on the creation of the Turkish nation state in the period from 1913 to 1950, a politically sensitive issue. He has an impressive list of publications that includes three monographs, and has become an international authority in the field of genocide studies. Dr Üngör is now a lecturer at Utrecht University and a lecturer/researcher with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD). He also writes satirical columns and essays on cosmopolitan life and on political and cultural boundaries. The jury calls Dr Üngör an outstanding, dedicated researcher who has already achieved a great deal. Amongst other things, it praises his ability to preserve a balance as regards the politically troublesome research topic of genocide.

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— Interview with Uğur Ümit Üngör in Akademie Nieuws (in Dutch)

Tjisse van der Heide received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Environmental Sciences 2012 for his research on the role of sea grasses and similar “ecosystem engineers” in the marine inter-tidal area.
Ecosystem engineers such as sea grasses and mussel banks are organisms that not only respond to environmental conditions but also greatly influence them themselves, thus creating suitable living conditions for themselves and for other species. Human action is putting ecosystem engineers under great pressure. Dr Van der Heide’s research is a major contribution to conservation biology. He made a positive impression on the jury as coordinator for the Wadden Sea Keys Project (Waddensleutels), a complex, large-scale research project concerning the ecological recovery of the Wadden Sea. The jury also sees Tjisse van der Heide as a role model for young researchers because of the quality of his work, his outreach activities, and his multidisciplinary approach.

Article
— Interview with Tjisse van der Heide in Akademie Nieuws (in Dutch)