Pieter Zwerver

During my EngD in Qualified Medical Engineering, I addressed one of healthcare’s pressing challenges: how to transform the vast streams of clinical monitoring data into actionable insights that improve patient care. At Catharina Hospital, I developed and demonstrated a proof-of-concept dashboard that integrates high-resolution monitoring data from the ICU and operating rooms with electronic patient records. This work represents a step forward from fragmented, ad hoc monitoring toward a holistic, data-driven view of the patient.

Johan Bucher

Winning the KIVI EngD Award would not only honor a personal milestone it would illuminate a transformative moment for the emerging EngD program at Wageningen University & Research. Through the anticipated article in De Ingenieur, this recognition would extend far beyond individual achievement, offering a platform to showcase the strength of engineering innovation in life sciences. It would amplify the visibility of both the program and the groundbreaking technology that bridges digital engineering with plant biology.

Eyob Amra

For me, this award is about more than recognition. It represents what the EngD program stands for: using engineering to create realworld impact through innovation and collaboration. My project, “Development of a Design Framework for Mass Personalization Systems”, tackles a challenge that affects millions: how can we make technology more inclusive, adaptive, and sustainable? Today, people expect products tailored to their needs, but traditional manufacturing is rigid. This gap limits user satisfaction, excludes diversity, and creates waste.

Inga Maria Giorgadze

I began this project with an idealized view of Dutch infrastructure, but engaging with the industry revealed limited digital capacity and very fragmented efforts in implementing Digital Twins. This prompted me to reflect on practical solutions, setting aside academic ideals to develop a method for pavement Digital Twins that anyone can implement using basic GIS tools. By focusing on real-world impact rather than sophisticated digital applications, the methodology I designe has been explored and received interest from road authorities, and I am now expanding it to a predictive model, demonstrating both the practical value of my work and the lessons I learned about translating innovation into practice. Seeing the potential of this methodology continues to inspire me to further refine and expand its impact.

Faezeh Ghasemi

The KIVI EngD Award recognizes research that bridges academia and industry through practical innovation and measurable societal impact. My EngD project embodies this mission by addressing a core question: How can a traditional, asset-heavy industry like container rental evolve into a data-driven service provider? At ELA Container GmbH—Europe’s market leader in modular space solutions—the challenge was not the absence of data, but its fragmentation. Valuable information was scattered across IoT devices, ERP systems, and logistics platforms, making it difficult for employees and customers to gain unified insight into operations. My goal was to design a solution that would make these data sources and the insights accessible, actionable, and human-centered. Using the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), I developed and validated two major solutions that together form the foundation of ELA’s digital transformation journey.

Shahrzad Shadman

With rapid urbanization and the increasing demand for underground space, cities face severe challenges related to excavation damages, congestion, and maintenance inefficiency. The Vertical Cables and Pipes System (VKLS) addresses these issues by reorganizing underground utilities vertically within a modular rack structure. This innovative system optimizes limited subsurface space, reduces excavation-related disruptions, and improves accessibility for maintenance and expansion.

Bram Kok

Imagine a chip that can measure important substances in the blood circulation in real-time! My Engineering Doctorate project focused on the research, development, and optimisation of an interleukin-6 (IL-6) biosensor chip, with the aim of making it applicable to a sensor. The ultimate goal was to create a chip that could be used in a sensor capable of measuring the health of fish in real time, without disturbing their natural behaviour. This turned out to be an ambitious challenge that required knowledge from many different fields. It required knowledge from optics and materials science to chemistry and biology, and involved creating a close collaboration between different departments of Wageningen University & Research and the University of Twente.

Daniel Wondyifraw

Dutch cities face growing pressure to reduce CO₂ emissions and support sustainable urban development. The Netherlands is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, with more than 92 percent of its population living in urban areas, which increases the environmental impact of construction and infrastructure development . This makes sustainable construction and data-driven municipal planning a national priority. The LOKET consortium, involving municipal, academic, and industry partners including JADS and TU/e, reflects this ambition. The LOKET programme and the planned Innovation Quarter Den Bosch (IKDB) aim to explore practical low-carbon logistics coordination and environmentally responsible neighborhood development. 

Abdul Wahab Sharfo

The Dutch healthcare system is under growing pressure. An aging population, increasing treatment complexity, and a shortage of medical staƯ are creating an urgent need for smarter, more eƯicient clinical workflows. My thesis directly tackled this challenge by reimagining how HDR-brachytherapy for prostate cancer can be delivered — making it more accurate, more eƯicient, and more sustainable for the future of cancer care.

Conducted within the Qualified Medical Engineer (QME) program at the Technical University of Eindhoven and in collaboration with the radiotherapy department at the Erasmus MC, my project bridged engineering innovation and clinical practice. The goal: to optimize the HDR-brachytherapy workflow for both primary and salvage prostate cancer treatments through data-driven design and technological advancement. 

Georgia Skroumpelou 

Ivo Adriaan Tjalma 

Jorn de Vos 

Mahdi Mohajeri 

Shachi Marthu Shanbhag 

Till Engelhardt 

Valentin Bordoux 

Maas van Apeldoorn 

During my 10-month graduation period, I developed a simulation framework that addresses a key tooling gap in the design of self-driving laboratories (SDLs). These SDLs have the potential to accelerate sustainable energy research and other scientific domains by automating and optimizing experimental workflows. The framework will be released open-source on GitHub in 2026, extending its impact beyond DIFFER to the wider SDL research community. 

My project was awarded a cum laude distinction (9.5/10) by Eindhoven University of Technology, recognizing both its technical quality and societal relevance. I also presented my work at NWO’s ICT.OPEN conference, and a scientific publication based on the project is currently in preparation for release alongside the open-source tool.

Mahsa Barghi Mehmandari 

A key contribution of this work lies in addressing a crucial gap in the Landelijke Bruggen en Sluizen standaard (LBS), the national bridge-lock standard. The existing LBS defines only a limited and incomplete set of behaviors for bridge-lock combinations. During this project, we took the initiative to define, formalize, and validate new requirements for these combined infrastructural objects. These newly defined requirements have been verified in collaboration with RWS engineers and can serve as a foundation for updating the LBS to include bridge-lock combination behaviors. This not only extends the technical outcomes of the project but also ensures its long-term impact on the standardization and maintainability of Dutch infrastructure.

Bas Spijkerman

Via a colleague, I learned about the KIVI EngD Award, and since I am finishing my EngD at the end of November, I decided to apply. My EngD project is a collaboration between the University of Twente and ASML, which means I have been splitting my time between Eindhoven and Enschede. I am proud of the development I made, and would like to share my story. After completing my master’s in Industrial Design Engineering, I did not feel ready to start working in industry. I wanted to develop myself further, especially in acoustics. I already explored during my graduation assignment but wanted to dive deeper into the topic. Ironically, during my master’s, I always said: “I will never go into academia.” So when I was first asked about doing an EngD, I boldly said no. A PhD was completely out of the question. But over time, I changed my mind. The EngD seemed like the perfect fit: project based work combined with the chance to learn more about acoustics.

Salma Rian