Yesterday, during the official opening of the new academic year, University of Twente’s top students of the previous academic year were presented with graduation awards. Bram de Rooij, Yoeri Boink, Max Klaassen, Carolyne Danilla and Rick Driessen received a certificate and a cheque from Rector Magnificus Thom Palstra. During the ceremony, Pieter Roos also received the Central Education Award, the prize for the University of Twente teacher of the year.
The university’s Rector Magnificus traditionally presents five graduation awards during the opening ceremony of the new academic year: one for the top student of each faculty. With these prestigious awards, the University of Twente aims to reward outstanding students for their achievements.
Bram de Rooij
At the beginning of this year, Bram finished his Master’s in Financial Engineering & Management at the faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences. He completed his graduation research project at Deloitte and was offered a job as a consultant after graduation.
In order to reduce the likelihood that, in the event of a new financial crisis, banks become dependent on government support, options have been created to convert part of the loan capital to equity capital. One way of doing this is by issuing Contingent Convertible bonds. Mr De Rooij conducted research into the impact these structures would have on banks’ funding costs. His Master’s thesis, entitled The effect of different CoCo structures on the funding costs of a financial institution was given a mark of 9.
Yoeri Boink
Yoeri Boink received the graduation award for the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. He completed his Master’s in Applied Mathematics last year. Mr Boink conducted research into the mathematical modelling of transport in vascular systems such as blood vessels. Mr Boink developed a model that allows users to determine the speed and direction of particles. This will help doctors diagnose patients. Mr Boink received a mark of 10 out of 10 for his thesis entitled Combined Modelling of Optimal Transport and Segmentation Revealing Vascular Properties. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Twente.
Max Klaassen
Max Klaassen completed a Master’s programme in Thermal and Fluid Engineering. His thesis Near field atomization in pressure swirl nozzles was awarded a mark of 9. Mr Klaassen researched spray drying; an efficient way of extracting water from a fluid, such as milk, in industrial processes. Mr Klaassen researched the relationship between liquid properties and spray properties. His work included creating images of the droplets from the spray, to determine the size of the droplets. He temporarily ‘froze’ the spray using a powerful laser, allowing him to capture these images. Mr Klaassen was offered a traineeship at AkzoNobel.
Carolyne Danilla
Carolyne Danilla received the graduation award for the faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, where she completed a Master’s programme in GeoInformatics. She conducted research into a new classification approach for specific radar images that use neural networks. This allows you to automatically denoise images. Danila was awarded 90 (out of 100) points for her thesis entitled Convolutional neural networks for contextual denoising and classification of SAR images. She currently works for Esri in Eastern Africa, where she represents Uganda.
Rick Driessen
Rick Driessen was presented the graduation prize for his thesis entitled Development of a multistage fluidized bed for deep H2S removal from natural gas. Mr Driessen completed a Master’s degree programme in Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Science and Technology and studied the purification of natural gas. A number of gas fields are currently not being used because they are too polluted. Mr Driessen hopes that a cheaper purification process will help make these gas fields available for use again. He worked on methods for purifying solid particles instead of liquids. Mr Driessen received two marks for his graduation work: a 9 and a 10. Mr Driessen is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Twente.
Pieter Roos
Pieter Roos received the Central Education Award today; the prize for the University of Twente teacher of the year. The prize is a token of the students’ appreciation and of quality education. The award is an extra incentive for teachers to offer the best education possible and make improvements where needed. Mr Roos and finalists Bram Nauta and Marco van Bommel each gave a mini-lecture in June to demonstrate their way of teaching. The lectures were assessed by the audience, the committee in charge of organizing the award, and a jury. Yesterday, Roos received a certificate and a prize in the amount of €2,500.
