ET Students win prizes at KHMW Young Talent Awards

Three students from the Faculty of Engineering Technology have been awarded with prizes from the KHMW Young Talent Awards, which were presented on 24 November 2025 at the Hodshon House in Haarlem.

• KHMW Young Talent Graduation Award for Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Jnandeep Talukdar MSc, Master Mechanical Engineering, for his thesis Singularities with Surfactants.
• KHMW Young Talent Encouragement Awards – Encouragement Awards for Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science: Francesco Berera, Bachelor Mechanical Engineering
• KHMW Young Talent Encouragement Awards – Encouragement Awards for Civil and Maritime Engineering and Physics and Applied Physics: Domonkos Kovács follows the Bachelor Civil Engineering

The Young Talent Encouragement and Graduation awards of the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences (KHMW) are presented annually to promising students with the best academic results in their programme at a Dutch university to encourage them to develop their academic and scientific talent even further. Jnandeep received a cash prize of 3000, where Domonkos and Francesco received a prize of each 500 euro.

After working in the motorcycle industry for three years, I decided to move to the Netherlands and return to my studies with a new mindset and clear goals. Winning this prize is a wonderful confirmation that I made the right choice. My previous experience in R&D taught me the practical side of engineering, but the University of Twente is giving me the theoretical depth I was looking for. I am honoured by this recognition and deeply grateful to my professors for their support.

I’m delighted to receive this KHMW award for my master’s thesis. I’m deeply grateful to my supervisors and collaborators in the Physics of Fluids group for the freedom and guidance they gave me. Working on what seems like a simple question, whether two drops merge or remain separate, turned out to be incredibly rich; the problem had many beautiful layers, and I learned a great deal from exploring them. I’m honoured by this recognition and excited to keep pursuing challenging questions in my current PhD.

"I am very honored to receive the Young Talent Prize from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. Receiving this prize showed me that pushing hard is worth it and grades are not just numbers in Osiris. The award helps me a lot and I will be investing into the future with it."

We are proud of our students’ achievements and congratulate them with this wonderful recognition. We wish Jnandeep, Domonkos and Francesco every success in their future development and (academic) career.

About the KHMW Young Talent Awards

The Royal Holland Society of Sciences (KHMW), founded in 1752, is the oldest learned society in the Netherlands. With its annual Young Talent Awards, the KHMW aims to promote interest in science and encourage young talent in the Netherlands to develop further within their field.