Historian Lukas M. Verburgt and health scientist Jorien Treur, both NIAS Fellows in 2021/22, are to receive a KNAW Early Career Award. The award, consisting of €15,000 and a work of art, is intended for researchers in the Netherlands who are at the start of their careers and have original and innovative research ideas.
Verburgt and Treur are among the twelve young researchers who are recipients of this award. The winners represent the full breadth of science and scholarship. They are, for example, studying the positive aspects of ADHD, the “appetite” of cancer cells and the influence of social media on the public’s appreciation of science.
Lukas M. Verburgt (1989)
Individual Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) & guest researcher at Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University
Lukas Verburgt is a multitalented researcher whose field of expertise is the history of science and philosophy. His research focuses on shifts in the way scientists and philosophers define the nature and limits of their discipline and what this says about how they imagine its past and future. He is also interested in the role of the unknowable: what is regarded as scientifically or philosophically unknowable, and how does this relate to notions of what constitutes good science or philosophy and the mutual relationship between these disciplines?
Jorien Treur (1988)
Assistant Professor of Genetics and Psychiatry, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Department of Psychiatry and For-Women-in-Science Fellow at NIAS
People who smoke cigarettes, consume excessive quantities of alcohol, or use cannabis are more likely than average to be depressed, bipolar or have a psychotic disorder. Why is that? This is the question that Jorien Treur examines in her research. Treur uses innovative genetic research techniques to identify cause and effect. She also focuses on new therapies, for example computer-based cognitive training that can help people stop addictive behaviours. Treur’s aim is to improve the treatment of mental health problems and prevent them from arising in the first place.
About the KNAW Early Career Award
The KNAW Early Career Award is being presented this year for the third time. The winners have been selected in the four Academy domains: Humanities; Behavioural Sciences, Social Sciences and Law; Natural Sciences and Engineering; and Medical, Biomedical and Health Sciences. There are three winners in each domain. The KNAW Early Career Award consists of a monetary award of €15,000, made available from the Academy Fund. The winners are free to spend this award on their research careers as they see fit.
In addition, all winners receive the art object Extended Jewellery by Laura Klinkenberg (1992). It is a brass screw with a twist, representing the ‘twist’ needed in both research and art to come up with new ideas and symbolising the contrariness of research. Extended Jewellery won the art competition associated with the first edition of the KNAW Early Career Award.
The KNAW Early Career Awards will be presented during a celebratory event in the Trippenhuis Building on 14 February 2022.
Photo: “Extended Jewellery” by Laura Klinkenberg, www.ritualdesign.nl
- Announcement with full list of laureates “KNAW Early Career Award for Twelve Young Researchers“