DSM Awards

To promote excellence in innovation, DSM awards a number of prizes every year for exceptional achievements of external specialists working in a variety of fields.

At present we have the following awards categories in place:

These prestigious awards seek to recognize and reward outstanding young researchers (PhD students and those who have recently obtained their PhD) who are conducting innovative research with clear potential for practical applications.

The Awards are open to researchers in two international European regions:

• North: comprising the Netherlands, Belgium and North Rhine-Westphalia; and
• South: comprising Switzerland, Austria, Northeastern France and Southern Germany.

On 3 June 2008 the Belgian researcher Maarten Roeffaers who received his doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) won the first prize in the DSM Science & Technology Awards (North) 2008. The international judging committee, chaired by DSM Chief Technology Officer Dr Jos Put, selected Dr Maarten Roeffaers for his PhD thesis entitled ‘Heterogeneous Catalysis: a fluorescence microscopic study’.

On 17 June 2008 the German researcher Andreas Walther, who will obtain his doctorate from the University of Bayreuth (Germany), won the first prize in the DSM Science & Technology Awards (South) 2008. The international judging committee, chaired by Dr. Manfred Eggersdorfer, R&D Director of DSM Nutritional Products, selected Andreas Walther for his PhD research in the field of polymeric materials.

The aim of the DSM Nutrition Award is to reward outstanding contributions to innovative research in the field of human and animal nutrition by established scientists anywhere in the world. The award is presented every two years and alternates between the fields of human and animal nutrition. In 2007 the award will be granted for research on animal nutrition, in 2009 for research on human nutrition, and so on.

The DSM Nutrition Award 2007 was awarded to Dr R. John Wallace, of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK), in recognition of his pioneering research in the field of animal nutrition. Dr Wallace is one of the world’s leading ruminant nutritionists and has published over 150 original scientific papers that have had a great impact on ruminant nutrition research. The award was presented in Dublin (IE) on 28 August during the Annual Meeting of EAAP, the European Association for Animal Production.

The aim of the DSM Performance Materials Award, a new award which was granted for the first time in 2008, is to recognize and reward outstanding contributions to the advancement of the materials sciences. It is presented once every two years, in cooperation with IUPAC, the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry.

The DSM Performance Materials Award 2008 has been awarded to Craig J. Hawker, Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Materials and Director of the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He was given the award in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the advancement of the materials sciences. Professor Hawker is one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of polymeric performance materials. His outstanding fundamental and applied research and his dedication to innovative science have earned him a high reputation and a large following in the academic world. The award was presented to Professor Hawker by Professor Joseph Put, Chief Technology Officer of DSM, at the IUPAC Macro 2008 Congress in Taipei (Taiwan) on June 30.