Previous winners
In previous years there have been winners with various themes. From drug crime and so-called “frequent complainers” in lawyer disciplinary law to renewable energy and leg prostheses.
The winners of the past editions demonstrate the diversity of the UG’s research and education and the extent to which societal challenges are being addressed.
Winners 2026
Category Researchers 2026
“Revolutionizing Pediatric and Prenatal Cancer Imaging: 90% Dose Reduction with Total-Body PET/CT” by Sasha Ivashchenko (UMCG/Faculty of Medical Sciences)
Children and pregnant patients undergoing cancer treatment often need repeated PET/CT scans, yet children are up to ten times more sensitive to radiation than adults. With child-cancer survival rates exceeding 80%, reducing radiation exposure is crucial to prevent secondary cancers later in life. Using innovative total-body PET/CT technology, this UMCG project optimizes PET/CT imaging for these vulnerable groups. The project reduced radiation exposure by over 90% for pregnant women and young children, and shortened scan times to one minute (from 15-20 minutes), eliminating the need for anesthesia. This breakthrough sets a new standard in pediatric and prenatal imaging worldwide, significantly improving safety, comfort, and long-term health outcomes.
Category Students 2026
“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)
Aphasia is a common language disorder after brain injury, causing severe word‐finding difficulties and hesitations, and often hard‐to‐understand speech. The winning project investigates whether next‐word prediction models can practically support these speakers in real conversations. Model outputs were assessed both quantitatively and by human raters, who judged many predictions as contextually appropriate and potentially usable in therapy and daily life. Clinicians responded positively when the results were presented at the AfasieNet conference, resulting in nine rehabilitation centres to join the collaboration. The project offers a realistic route towards tools that can cue word retrieval during everyday communication and, in the longer term, could be adapted for other groups with word‐finding problems, such as people with dementia and older adults.
Winners 2025
Category Researchers 2025
“Rubber Recycling” by Francesco Picchioni (Faculty Science and Engineering)
Picchioni's innovative work focuses on the global environmental crisis caused by rubber tyre waste. With more than 1 billion tyres discarded every year, the traditional recycling process is inefficient, produces weaker materials and makes tyre recycling expensive. Picchioni has developed a scalable, patented process that reprocesses vulcanized rubber, creating a durable, elastic material suitable for industrial reuse. This method significantly reduces the need for raw materials - such as petroleum-based rubber - and minimizes the environmental impact of burning millions of tyres, releasing toxic pollutants.
Category Students 2025
“Phone Masking Augmentation for Automatic Recognition of Whispered Speech'” by Igor Marchenko (Campus Fryslân)
This research addresses a key challenge in speech technology: making voice recognition work for whispered speech. Marchenko describes that although whispering is essential for many people with speech disorders, current systems struggle to recognize it accurately, because collecting large amounts of whispered speech data is unfeasible. Marchenko's breakthrough came about by combining linguistic knowledge with machine learning. By identifying which speech sounds change most dramatically during whispering, he created smart data expansion techniques that help computers learn from limited data. His methods, validated on US and Singaporean English datasets, show significant improvements in recognition accuracy.
By bridging linguistics and machine learning, his work has expanded the possibilities of inclusive technology. This interdisciplinary approach ensures the practical applicability of his research while laying the foundation for advances in ASR (automatic speech recognition) technologies aimed at disadvantaged communities. Working with industrial partners, his research demonstrates how theoretical insights can lead to impactful real-world solutions.
Winners 2024
Category Researchers 2024
'MyLeg' - A Smart and Intuitive Transfemoral Bionic Leg” by Raffaella Carloni (Faculty Science of Engineering)
Carloni has been the initiator and the scientific coordinator of the Horizon 2020 European project 'MyLeg' (2018-2023). In this collaborative project she led an interdisciplinary team consisting of engineers, rehabilitation physicians, human-movement scientists, and a world leader company in the field of lower-limb prostheses. Within the project, Carloni’s research was dedicated to advancing the development of above-knee prosthetic legs. The fundamental idea was to use a biomimicry approach and replicate the fundamental functionality of a healthy human leg in both the mechanics and in the control architecure of the new generation of bionic legs.
Category Students 2024
“Geospatial Data in International Development, the Case of Malawi” by Jonas Göbel (Faculty of Arts)
During his placement at the German International Development Bank (KfW), Göbel worked with his supervisor on generating and collecting data that captured the geographical location of project sites in southern Africa. They mapped schools, health clinics, and regions where projects are financed by the KfW. In recent years, the impacts of climate change have caused considerable damage to local infrastructure in Malawi, presenting challenges to the well-being of communities. In response, the KfW Development Bank, along with other stakeholders, has undertaken efforts to address these challenges and improve living conditions by supporting the financing of healthcare centers, schools, and energy infrastructure.
Winners 2023
Category Researchers 2023
“4NSEEK; Forensic Against Sexual Exploitation of Children” by George Azzopardi and Guru Swaroop Bennabhaktula (Faculty Science & Engineering)
This project focuses on the development of an AI tool that enables enforcement authorities to examine footage of sexual exploitation of minors. The tool can identify the device that was used to create the studied footage and whether or not a given set of images or videos were created with the same equipment. With this technique, enforcement authorities can investigate available footage more efficiently and accurately, and thus build a stronger case against suspects.
Category Students 2023
“Complaining about lawyers as a form of occupational therapy” by Nine van den Wijngaard (Faculty of Law)
The research is about dealing with so-called ‘frequent complainants’ in disciplinary procedure rules. The deans of the local Bar Association handle a large number of complaints every year. Of course, it is important that complainants have the opportunity to file a complaint. But the low-threshold nature of the complaints procedure has created a group of frequent complainants. Nine investigated what legal means the dean has to act against these frequent complainants. Her research has produced a set of practical do's and don'ts for the Bar Association.
Winners 2022
Category Researchers 2022
“The Administratieve War on Drugs” by Michelle Bruijn (Faculty of Law)
As part of her research project entitled ‘The Administrative War on Drugs’, Bruijn studies combating drug-related crime from a civil law perspective in an innovative manner. This is a highly relevant topic, in which she collaborates with partners from the field. The jury was impressed by the way in which she developed a practical tool which is already being used in workshops and training courses in the field.
Category Students 2022
“Cultural Engagement of Young Adults in Het Hogeland” by Ydwer Hoekstra, Stefan Ivanov, Roos Gielen en Joren Arkes (Faculty of Arts)
In their research project entitled ‘Cultural Engagement of Young Adults in Het Hogeland’, commissioned by the municipality of Het Hogeland, the students explored the cultural engagement of young adults in the municipality. The jury was impressed by the practical impact of the project, including the mind shift that the research triggered in the organizations involved and the newly established Cultural Youth Network.
Winners 2020
Category Researchers 2020
“Ocean Grazer” by Wout Prins , Antonis Vakis and Bayu Jayawardhana (Faculty Science and Engineering)
The Ocean Grazer harvests renewable energy from sea waves and integrates this with a modular solution for the large-scale storage of electricity that is generated by wind turbines and floating solar panels at sea. As a result, clean energy can be generated under all weather conditions. The mechanism is based on technology from a hydroelectric plant, technology that has been proven to be highly reliable and efficient for over a century.
Category Students 2020
“Ivy One” by Niels Weijermars (Faculty Science and Engineering)
Niels Weijermars developed an equipment which enables patients so that they no longer have to walk through corridors, tackle hurdles and manoeuvre themselves in busy lifts while dragging their portable IV drip stands. The Ivy One by Ivy Medical can be worn as a shoulder bag and offers high wearer comfort and optimal flexibility during IV treatment. This results in more freedom of movement for patients and lower work pressure for nurses and healthcare assistants.