The TGS Research Honours PhD Award for Twente's graduate student Top Talent will be awarded for the first time in 2013 and goes to Rindia Putri, MSc student in Chemical Engineering (MESA+ Institute). Prof. Jeroen Cornelissen, one of Putri's supervisors, will accept the award on behalf of Putri on Monday, 2 September at the opening of the academic year at the University of Twente. The prize that Putri has won consists of a check for 2,500 euros that she can spend on a doctoral course or research conference in her field. The three-year PhD funding that Putri would have received will be passed onto the number two on the list. Putri has already managed to find an external source of finance and will receive funding for four years from the LPDP Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education.
In her research proposal "Photo-triggered cargo release from engineered protein cages," Putri describes an innovative method by which she wants to use proteins as a sort of 'cage' for medicines. One of the advantages is that you can access the cages by means of, among other things, light. If the method succeeds, the rate of drug release at certain sites in the body of a patient can be controlled better. This is important in applications of smart designed medicines for targeted drug delivery where the drugs are released only in that part of the body where light occurs. In this way, Putri hopes to reduce the side effects of medication to a minimum.
The jury was unanimous: "Rindia Putri's research proposal was very clear and complete, and gave us confidence that this could succeed. Even if it fails, it will at least produce beautiful and interesting results. Moreover, in her presentation, she gave an extremely clear explanation. She knew exactly what it was about, she was very confident and could answer our critical questions superbly. Of the six candidates, she was best able to convey her ideas and to defend them."
Putri was selected from the six candidates who remained after the evaluation of 15 candidates from the first round. For each proposal, expert reviews were collected by renowned researchers in the field. The proposals, along with the expert reviews, were judged by a six-member jury.
Twente Graduate School
The Twente Graduate School was founded in 2009 and has about 19 different MSc + PhD programmes in partnership with the UT research institutes and departments. TGS focuses on outstanding students who aspire to careers as researchers. The 19 programmes have focused tracks to integrate the start up of the PhD already in the master’s phase.
TGS Research Honours PhD Award 2013
Prof. Petra de Weerd-Nederhof: "By awarding this prize, the Twente Graduate School hopes to promote the combined master's and PhD programmes. It is important to bind top talent to the UT as early as the master's phase. But obtaining further financing is then a must. This award is a pilot project and, in 2014, will be combined with a Research Honours programme in which excellent TGS master's students receive professional guidance for developing their proposals for external funding."