Finalists Ben Feringa Impact Award 2026 announced

On Tuesday 9 June 2026, the annual Ben Feringa Impact Award will be presented. With this award, the University of Groningen honours the unique achievements of its researchers and students in the field of knowledge utilisation. Nobel laureate Ben Feringa will present the prize to the winning researchers and students during a festive ceremony at Forum Groningen.

The award

The award will be presented in two categories: researchers and students. For each category, one award winner or prize-winning team will be declared during the ceremony. The winning project in the student category will receive a prize of € 2500 to spend freely. This amount will be financed by the Ubbo Emmius Fund. The winning project in the researchers category will receive a prize of € 5000 to be spent on further knowledge utilisation, made possible by the Board of the University. Knowledge utilisation is understood as the linking of scientific research to professional (non-academic) and/or societal (including economic) practice.

The finalists

Student category:

• “The wainscotting at museum Janning” - by Anna Sofie Kuiper, Caroline Roelfzema, Feyona Voerman en Klarissa Groen (Faculty of Arts)
• “AI-PHASIA: Next-word prediction for pauses and paraphasias in agrammatic anomic aphasic speech using unidirectional large language models” - by Thijs van der Laan (Faculty of Science and Engineering)
• “Gender equity and circular construction” - by Maruna Manthe (Campus Fryslân)

Category researchers:

• “Grounding AI - Exploring the role of algorithms in science” - by Matilde Ficozzi & Dario Rodighiero (Campus Fryslân)
• “Revolutionizing pediatric and prenatal cancer imaging: 90% dose reduction with total-body PET/CT” - by Sasha Ivashchenko (Faculty Medical Sciences/UMCG)
• “World’s first full-length single-molecule protein sequencer” - by Giovanni Maglia (Faculty of Science and Engineering)

The entries were assessed by a selection committee consisting of UG scientists, UG students and staff from external cooperation partners. This year, the jury consists of:

• Francesco Picchioni, professor Chemische Technologie (FSE, UG)
• Bettina van Hoven, professor Aletta Jacobs Chair ‘Place, social Change and Collaborative Research for Wellbeing and Justice’ (UCG, UG)
• Lana Fahham, student assessor (Board of the University, UG)
• Nienke Homan, Chair Koninklijke Vereniging van de Nederlandse Chemische Industrie & CEO Impact Hydrogen
• Joost van Egmond, Science journalist at Trouw

This year's presentation of the Ben Feringa Impact Award will take place at Forum Groningen. Friso Visser (creative director Brain Fusel) will host the festive award ceremony. Previous winners Prof. Michelle Bruijn (Faculty of Law) and Igor Marchenko (Campus Fryslân) will provide a keynote.

For questions or more information about the Ben Feringa Impact Award, please feel free to contact the project team.