Awards and Grants
Read here the latest news on awards and grants for researchers at the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
Thijs van der Laan and Prof. Giovanni Maglia won this year's FSE Impact Award.
Prof. Mariano Méndez has received the prestigious Argentine 'Premio RAÍCES 2025' (ROOTS award).
Prof. Ben Feringa has won the Feynman Experiment Prize for pioneering the control of molecular motion.
Alexander Belyy receives the FEBS Excellence Award 2025 for researching pathogenic microorganisms that ‘hijack’ their host cells’ cytoskeleton in order to escape the immune system.
Prof. Moniek Tromp has been selected as one of twenty new members of The Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE). The NAE is a select group of engineers, technologists and innovators from science and industry who have delivered outstanding achievements, play a pioneering role in social transitions and are committed to strengthening the role of engineering in our society.
Dr. Sina Katharina Götzfried has been awarded a Faculty of Impact grant from the to develop a new treatment for brain cancer.
Medical Pharmaceutical Sciences student Menna Zaharan of the University of Groningen has been awarded the 2025 Unilever Research Prize for her Master’s thesis.
Fourteen students of the Faculty of Science and Engineering (RUG) win national Young Talent Awards
Three ENW-M grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
FSE at the University of Groningen has signed a new agreement with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Indonesia to establish a double degree programme within the Masters degree programme Mechanical Engineering
A team led by Prof. Moniek Tromp has been awarded a 15.8 million euros grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to establish a new national X-ray research center.
With a grant from the Wadden Fund and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature, RUG Professor Britas Klemens Eriksson will conduct research into the impact of noise on underwater life in the Wadden Sea.
Two UG research projects have received funding from the National Growth Fund project Big Chemistry via NWO.
Prof. Ajay Kottapalli of the University of Groningen has been nominated for the prestigious Huibregtsen Prize.
Five UG researchers, working at the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant: Miles Wischnewski, Loredana Protesescu, Alexander Belyy, Tim Lichtenberg, and Michael Lerch. The European Research Council's (ERC) Starting Grants amount to €1.5 million each, for a period of five years. The grants are intended for outstanding researchers with the aim of stimulating cutting-edge research in Europe.
Honorary professor Bruno Ehrler of the University of Groningen has been appointed as the new director of AMOLF, the NWO Institute for research into functional complex matter.
Professors Ajay Kottapalli and Erika Covi have received Proof of Concept grants from the European Research Council (ERC).
Prof Dr Anna Salvati, Dr Christoffer Åberg and Prof Dr Siewert-Jan Marrink have been granted a National Science Agenda (NWA) funding to further develop life-saving drugs based on nanotechnology with the NanoMedNL consortium.
Prof Anastasiia Krushynska has been granted a EUR 600,000 National Science Agenda (NWA) funding to help develop innovative technologies for converting low-grade organic waste into durable, recyclable materials.
At the UG Ceremony of Merits on July 4, Ana Lazar was awarded the GUF 100 Prize, making her the best student of the Faculty of Science and Engineering 2024-2025.
During the RUG Ventures Innovation Day, Prof. Erik Heeres of the Faculty of Science and Engineering (RUG) was awarded the Impact Innovator Excellence Award.
Prof. David Lentink is a partner in the NaviSense project awarded 54.7 million euros by the German government to research the mechanisms animals use to navigate and how these mechanisms can inspire technology.
With the ‘Lipidomics Team’, Prof. Adri Minnaard has been named winner of the Chemistry Biology Interface Horizon Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).
Researchers at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (RUG) have received Comenius Teaching Fellow grants from the National Educational Research Organization (NRO).
The European Research Council has awarded ERC Advanced grants to Prof. Inga Kamp, Prof. Wouter Roos and Prof. Syuzanna Harutyunyan.
The University of the North team 'Lord of the Roads', in which students from educational institutions Noorderpoort, Hanzehogeschool and the University of Groningen collaborated, came second in the RDW Self Driving Challenge (SDC). The team competed in the open category.
Dr. Vassilis Kyriakou has received a EUR 400,000 grant of the NWO to develop an innovative electrochemical reactor for sustainable ammonia production.
For her pioneering research in the field of galactic archaeology, Else Starkenburg has been awarded the Pastoor Schmeitis Prize.
The new facility will be housed and developed at the UG's Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials (ZIAM).
On 25 April 2025, Arnold Driessen (Horst, the Netherlands, 1958) received a Royal Decoration. Driessen is Professor of Molecular Microbiology and chair of the Molecular Microbiology research department of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen.
The University of Groningen will receive nearly 1.5 million euros in funding from the Province of Groningen to assist entrepreneurial academic researchers in developing innovative ideas into a startup.
For her pioneering research on molecular systems, Nathalie Katsonis receives the Ammodo Science Award for fundamental research 2025.
Three ENW-M grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
Prof. Marleen Kamperman and Marijke Leliveld received EUR 100,000 from the Gratama Foundation for their research project aimed at producing organic textiles for sustainable fashion.
Prof. Tamalika Banerjee’s startup IMChip and Prof. Erik Frijlink and Dr. Luke van der Koog’s startup MimeCure have made it into the top 10 of the national Academic Startup Competition.
Professor Ming Cao receives an ‘AiNed’ Growth Fund grant of EUR 2.4 million for research that will contribute to faster adoption of AI at SMEs in the technical industry in the Netherlands.
Prof. Dr. Muhsin Harakeh has won the 2024 Lise Meitner Prize of the European Physical Society (EPS).
Prof. Maria Antoinietta Loi of the Faculty of Science and Engineering (University of Groningen) is appointed as Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS).
Six European researchers will start at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (UG) with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Dr. Elisabeth Wilhelm is partner in a consortium receiving a EUR 1.2 million ERDF-subsidy to develop an app to guide diabetes patients to a drug-free life.
Professor of Migratory Bird Ecology Theunis Piersma has been named a Knight of the National Order of Mauritania.
Syuzanna Harutyunyan and Geert van den Bogaart of the Faculty of Science and Engineering have been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept Grant.