KIVI Day of the Engineer 2025

Alumna engineer Meike Nauta is one of the finalists for the Prins Friso Engineering Award 2025 due to her outstanding work in AI, such as detecting pancreatic cancer and developing a chatbot app to help people find a suitable book.

You can still vote for her! Curious about Meike’s projects? Read more here.

Check out the finalists or go directly to this page to cast your vote!

The Solar Boat Twente student team is also a finalist for the KIVI Student Team Award. This award was established by KIVI to support the engineers of tomorrow, showcase what students can achieve through teamwork, and increase awareness of their innovative projects.

Want to learn more about Solar Boat Twente, the other finalists, or vote? Click here!

In 2021, Abeje Mersha was one of the three finalists for the Prins Friso Engineering Award. This year, he returns to the Day of the Engineer celebration, but this time as a keynote speaker, with the theme: "Unmanned robots as indispensable companions for humans."

Abeje Mersha earned his Master’s in Electrical Engineering in 2010 and defended his PhD in June 2014 on "Autonomous and Teleoperated Aerial Service Robots: Theory and Application." He is currently a professor in Smart Mechatronics and Robotics (SMART) at Saxion University of Applied Sciences.

Pavlina Nanou was chosen by the jury as the winner of the Prins Friso Engineering Award 2024. The jury praised the Twente-based chemical engineer for her innovative "out-of-the-box" approach.

She is one of the founders of TNO spinoff TORWASH, which has developed an innovative process to extract sustainable chemicals, fuels, and even fertilisers from sewage sludge.

Read more about the 2024 award ceremony.