GUF-100 prizes 2026

The GUF-100 prizes are awarded every year to the best students at our University. This year’s prizes were presented on 3 July during the ‘Ceremony of Merits’ to mark the end of the 2025-2026 academic year. GUF-100 prizes consist of a certificate and €2,500 in prize money. In addition, the prize winners are asked to join the GUF-100 community and one of them is invited to give a short speech at the official opening of the 2026-2027 academic year in the Martinikerk.

A jury selects the 11 prize winners from the candidates nominated by the faculties. There is one winner per faculty. The jury this year comprised the seven members of the GUF- Board, who were joined by Ece Aydin, GUF-100 prize winner in 2022, Bas Ankoné, also a GUF-100 prize winner in 2022, and Lana Fahman, the student assessor on the Board of the University of Groningen. Once again, the organization of this year’s GUF-100 prize competition was in the capable hands of Judith Noord and Prof. Hanny Elzinga.

A UG-wide appeal is made for candidates for the GUF-100 prizes. Students can put themselves forward, and lecturers and fellow students can nominate candidates from within their faculty. All 11 faculty committees assess the letters of motivation, CVs, and recommendations that they receive, before selecting the best three nominees per faculty. Good academic results are important for nomination, but candidates must also be able to demonstrate outstanding personal or academic merit beyond their studies. Finally, the 33 nominees are invited to give a pitch and answer questions in front of the GUF-100 jury.

In the next academic year, I will be standing down as chair of the GUF Board and passing the responsibility to my successor, Prof. Marcel van Vugt. Looking back on 11 years of sitting on the GUF-100 prize jury and writing commendations for the winners (since 2015, when I took over from Prof. Piet van der Kruit), I am immensely proud to realize just how many excellent students we have at our University. All the faculties are now highly committed to pinpointing these students, and the faculty committees ensure that three outstanding students are put forward on the basis of a good portfolio and clear recommendations. This makes it even more inspiring for us, the GUF-100 jury, to read all 33 CVs and letters of motivation and/or recommendation, to witness these excellent students hold their pitches, and to finally choose the winners from their midst. The choice was not always easy, as generally speaking, all the candidates are excellent and the differences between them are small sometimes. However, having completed often very serious discussions, the jury’s decision was usually unanimous.

Looking back over the past 11 years, the number of female winners has clearly risen. In fact, in more recent years, the ratio rose to around 50/50, in line with the male/female ratio of students at the university. Interestingly, the proportion of international winners has also increased steadily. This year was no exception, and the percentage of international prize winners is way above the average percentage of international students at the University, a sign that internationalization is enriching the talent at our University and consequently in society as a whole.

I hope that the following commendations (in no particular order; click the photo of the various prize winners to read their commendation) will give you an impression of what makes these students so special, and why we as a jury are so enthusiastic about them. The prize winners themselves say a few words in the attached short film, which was also shown at the Ceremony of Merits.

On behalf of the jury, Professor Lou de Leij, Chair of the Board of the Groningen University Fund.