(By: TUDelft/communication)
Thursday, June 8th, the award ceremony of the Marina van Damme Grant 2017 took place with a very special result. Due to the high quality of the nominees, Marina van Damme decided to reward two nominated alumni with the scholarship of 9000 euro. Leah Sosa and Jetty van Ginkel are the two winners of the Marina van Damme Grant 2017.

Jetty van Ginkel finished her master Molecular Cellular and Tissue Engineering at the TU Twente in 2010, she continued with research for her PhD in Bionanoscience at TU Delft. Jetty is working now at the Erasmus MC as Business Development Manager. In her pitch she talked about the challenges between research and market capitalisation. Scientists often do not know how to market products. Jetty would like to assist these scientists to help promising product ideas and research results a step further towards realization. To do this, she will follow a 3 year training to become a technical transmission officer and get the RTTP status. RTTP stands for Registered Technology Transfer Professional. The Marina van Damme Grant will contribute to this training. Because both of her parents work in health care, Jetty would like to bridge the gap between the academic world, corporations and citizens by focussing on the medical field. The jury of the Marina van Damme Grant is pleased to support Jetty with this program and praises her commitment and devotion to making her ambition come true.

KIVI honorary member for Marina van Damme
On behalf of the Executive Board of KIVI, Jolienne Brouwer presented Dr. Ir. Marina van Damme with the KIVI honorary membership directly following the award ceremony. KIVI rewards the honorary membership to persons who have made an exceptional contribution to technology in the Netherlands. Marina van Damme was surprised and very pleased with this special recognition.