The Board of the Hoogewerff-Fonds Foundation has awarded the Hoogewerff Gold Medal 2024 to Prof Dr Remko Boom, professor at Wageningen University & Research
By awarding the Gold Medal, the board of the Hoogewerff-Fonds Foundation wishes to express its great appreciation for Remko Boom's excellent contribution to the development of food process science.
The Hoogewerff Gold Medal is awarded every three to five years by the board of the Hoogewerff-Fonds Foundation to a renowned researcher who has distinguished himself in an exceptional way in the field of chemical technology. This lifetime achievement award is considered an important appreciation of the candidate's entire life's work. This is the 23rd time the Gold Medal will be awarded since the Hoogewerff Fund was established in 1917.
Professor Boom received his doctoral degree in chemical engineering cum laude from the University of Twente. He then worked for six years at the Unilever Research Laboratory in Vlaardingen before being appointed professor of Food Process Engineering in Wageningen in 1998, at the age of 32. Over the past 25 years, Remko Boom has built up an impressive research group that has a major impact in academia and industry.
His research mainly focuses on developing new processes and products for the food industry. A visionary, he redefined food process engineering into a modern research discipline integrating new developments such as micro- and nanoscale engineering as well as sustainability aspects. The combination of fundamental research with an eye for practical applications has led to new principles, new processes and methods. In particular, his work on protein separation is well known. A well-known example of a technology applied is the Frisian Flag cappuccino foam technology.
Remko Boom is known as an excellent and enthusiastic professor. He gives his lectures passionately. He trains many young researchers in his group who in turn occupy important positions in academic and industrial research. His output in the form of publications is impressive (almost 600 scientific articles).
Besides his scientific work, Remko Boom is active in the national process technology eco-system. But his excellence is also appreciated internationally. Remko Boom is also an affiliate professor at the University of Copenhagen and also lectures at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore and Tsukuba University in Japan. Besides these academic positions, he is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of DSM-Firmenich and chairman of the Committee for Plant Science, Agriculture and Food Biotechnology of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, with a budget of USD 117 billion, the largest private fund in the world.
The Hoogewerff Fund Gold Medal will be officially awarded at the Netherlands Process Technology Symposium (NPS19) on 9 October 2024. The symposium will be held at the Forum Groningen.
The Hoogewerff Fund was founded in 1917 by Prof Dr S. Hoogewerff, then a professor at Delft University of Technology. The Foundation stimulates and rewards scientific research and education in the field of chemical technology in the broadest sense. In addition, the Foundation stimulates activities aimed at knowledge valorisation, industrial innovation and new business activity.
The Foundation regularly awards three important prizes, namely the Hoogewerff Gold Medal, the Hoogewerff Youth Award and the Hoogewerff Incentive Award.
