In honor of the fifth anniversary of the Eindhoven Artificial Intelligence Systems Institute (EAISI), Carlo van de Weijer got to kick off this year’s Research Day with a keynote on groundbreaking AI research happening at the university, as stated in the Research Day report on the TU/e website.

The fact that AI occupies an important place at the university was also evident in the Science Awards. For example, the Young Researcher Award was won by Francesca Grisoni from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She is developing new AI methods for drug discovery. Tugce Martagan from the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences and winner of the Groundbreaking Researcher Award also uses AI in her research. She combines artificial intelligence, life sciences and operations research to improve pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chains.

Other Science Awards winners were Professor Marc Geers of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (Leadership in Excellence), EngD trainee Beatrice Federici (Best EngD thesis) and Vincent Debets of the Department of Applied Physics & Science Education (Best PhD dissertation).

In the Blauwe Zaal, Martin van den Brink (ASML) and Karen Scrivener (EPFL) were awarded honorary doctorates. Van den Brink was recognized for his crucial contribution to the production of the latest generation of semiconductor manufacturing machines (EUV). Scrivener is one of the leading and most influential researchers in the field of cement and concrete.

PhD researcher Calum Ryan was announced as the winner of Talking Science, an event that took place on Tuesday night, where ten PhD and EngD researchers from different departments delivered pitches about their research. His winning pitch was about “superwater,” a concept of plasma-activated water. He also carried a small bottle of the water with him on stage, but did not drink it.