The American Society for Precision Engineering (ASPE) has awarded Marijn Nijenhuis of the ET faculty the Early Career Award for his contributions to advancing the art and practice of precision engineering by outstanding technical contributions. Nijenhuis is the fourth Early Career Awardee and the first from outside the US.
Precision engineering includes the design, development and manufacture of high-precision equipment, instruments and products. The Netherlands is renowned for precision engineering and mechatronics with ASML, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Demcon and VDL among the big names in the field.
Marijn Nijenhuis holds a master and PhD degree in mechanical engineering (both cum laude). Since 2020, he is an Assistant Professor in the Precision Engineering group at the University of Twente. Nijenhuis researches elastic mechanisms, both on the element and system level, for which he develops flexible multibody software. The elastic mechanisms function without any play and friction, which makes them highly predictable. A great example is the T-Flex: a fully flexure-based hexapod with a unique large range of motion and sub-micron precision positioning.
On the picture: Left: Senajith Rekawa, President of the ASPE. Right: Marijn Nijenhuis.
