Ben Feringa Impact Award for Francesco Picchioni

We are incredibly proud to congratulate our colleague Francesco Picchioni on receiving the Ben Feringa Impact Award 2025 of the University of Groningen.

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.

The jury describes Picchioni's project as a fantastic way to reuse and reprocess car tyres, resulting in a high degree of social impact. It is a very unique and good invention and the jury sees it as a big plus that the project is patented.

Ben Feringa Impact Award
Every year, the University of Groningen distinguishes special achievements of its researchers and students in the field of knowledge utilization with the Ben Feringa Impact Award. This honours scientists and students with exceptional focus on knowledge utilization. Knowledge utilization 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 utilization.

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