Master's student AI wins Ben Feringa Impact Award 2026

On Tuesday 9 June, Thijs van der Laan won the Ben Feringa Impact Award 2026 for students. He won the prize for the AI-based tool he developed that supports people with aphasia by predicting the possible next word when they hesitate. Thijs van der Laan was one of three student finalists. In the category for researchers Sasha Ivanshchenko won the award.

With the Ben Feringa Impact Award, the University of Groningen distinguishes special achievements of its researchers and students that links scientific research to societal or professional practice.

Supporting daily communication of people with aphasia

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.

Presenting at conference leads to medical partnership

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.

Positive impact of AI

The jury was very enthusiastic about this project. Firstly, it stands out for its clear and compelling writing, centered around a brilliant idea that captures the essence of AI as a language model. The jury is impressed by how the positive impact of AI is illustrated, demonstrating just how innovative and valuable this technology can be. The thesis of Thijs van der Laan was used as a pilot study for a larger research project that was recently awarded a NWO-Veni grant. The project also got attention from Museum NEMO and the Dutch broadcasting organisation NOS.

Ben Feringa Impact Award

Every year, the University of Groningen distinguishes special achievements of its researchers and students in the field of knowledge utilisation with the Ben Feringa Impact Award. This honours scientists and students with exceptional focus on knowledge utilisation. Knowledge utilisation refers to linking scientific research to professional (non-academic) and/or societal (including economic) practice. The winning project in the student category will receive a prize of €2,500 to be freely spent. 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.

The jury for assessing the nominations for the Ben Feringa Impact Award 2026 consisted of Francesco Picchioni (RUG/FSE), Bettina van Hoven (RUG/UCG), Lana Fahham (RUG/CvB), Joost van Egmond (Science journalist, Trouw), en Nienke Homan (President KNVCI/CEO Impact Hydrogen).

More information

• The project of Thijs van der Laan (Faculty Science & Engineering) is entitled “AI-phasia: Next-Word Prediction for Pauses and Paraphasias in Agrammatic Anomic Aphasic Speech Using Unidirectional Large Language Models”
• Winners Ben Feringa Impact Award 2026