A clear technological profile, an international attitude. And most of all attracting top talent, scientific staff and students. Dave Blank, who gave this year's Foundation Day speech, wants to inspire people all over the world. As Chief Scientific Ambassador, he promotes the image of a young and bold University of Twente.
In his speech, Dave chose not to focus on his great fascination with Nano technology. He has successfully expressed this message many times before to a wide audience as scientific director of MESA+. Instead, in his Foundation Day speech, he took the audience back to the start of his scientific career, to the exciting times of the discovery of high-temperature super conduction and materials with special properties, the 'perovskites'. The technique for the controlled construction of some of these materials - atom layer by atom layer - was perfected at the University of Twente. The impressive machine required for this process can now also be found at laboratories elsewhere in the world. These materials have unexpected properties: two non-conductive materials stacked on top of each other suddenly become conductive in the boundary area.
Small is beautiful
In his new job as Chief Scientific Ambassador, Dave's mission is to interest the world in what is happening at the University of Twente. “You can sense the entrepreneurship, amongst the staff, and definitely also amongst the students. This can be communicated even more effectively, because small can be beautiful. We must show courage as a university that is young and bold. This also means attracting scientific talent, same as they do at the ETH in Zürich or the EPFL in Lausanne. And top students from all over the world.” We have every reason to be proud: for example, if the Times Higher Education ranking is limited to technical universities, the University of Twenty is ranked at an impressive number sixteen: “This does not mean that we can sit back and relax; we should be able to climb a couple of ranks.”
Connections
Prior to the Foundation Day speech, vice-chancellor Ed Brinksma discussed the current dynamics and speed of developments, which also need to be addressed by a university like the UT. On the day of the presentation of the National Science Agenda, for which close to 12,000 questions were submitted by members of society, Brinksma stresses the importance of new connections. For example, removing the artificial divide between benefit-driven and curiosity-driven research, but also finding combinations of disciplines that can respond quickly to societal issues. The impact this has on research at the University of Twenty and its organization is a topical subject these days.
But when it comes to a 'lasting influence' - the theme of the 54th Dies Natalis - we must not forget our students and our 45,000 alumni, vice-chancellor Ed Brinksma says. A university may have many ambitions with its research programmes, but education must not come second. The Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (AWTI) recently expressed their concern about this. The valuation of education must not lose out to the research effort. This is another area where Ed Brinksma intends to create new connections together with the organization.
After a fantastic musical interlude by string section Fuse, the celebration was concluded by the presentation of two awards: the Overijssel PhD Award to Renske van Wijk and the Professor de Winter Prize to Anna Sperotto.
