The 119th General Meeting was held as usual at the KR&ZV De Maas. However, this time the finish of the ITU World Triathlon was just around the corner. And although the ITU organization did its best to drown out our speakers, their contribution to science turned out to be too interesting to really disrupt the meeting.

After a short meeting with an explanation of the events of the BGPW for the years 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, we quickly moved on to the Steven Hoogendijk award ceremonies for the best PhD students and graduates in the field of medical and technical Experimental Philosophy at Erasmus MC and TU Delft.

For a short impression you can watch this video.

This time the medical Steven Hoogendijk Prize went to Dr. Ralph Stadhouders who has done groundbreaking work on the regulatory function of DNA, which is not a gene itself but apparently plays a very important role. In this case for the production and differentiation of red blood cells. Dr. Ralph Stadhouders’ laudation can be found here and his explanation here.

The technical Steven Hoogendijk prize went to dr.ir. Mickael Perrin, who has made a special breakthrough for the continued miniaturization of chip technology by extracting diode and triode properties from a single molecule, much smaller than the current switching elements on a chip. The laudation of dr.ir. Mickael Perrin can be found here and his explanation here.

The Steven Hoogendijk graduation prizes for the Experimental Philosophy went to drs. Lindsay Angus and drs. Elise van Gils-Bouw of the Erasmus MC and ir. Nadia Remmerswaal and drs.ir. Olaf van Campenhout from TU Delft.

After this scientific debate, our Praeses magnificus: Burg. Aboutaleb gives a very interesting argument about the use of Measurement and Control Technology in Politics. It turned out that scientific insights do not always correspond directly to the social debate, but general scientific/technical principles are indeed useful in politics.

Finally, the meeting ended with drinks and a pleasant dinner during which the presentation was discussed in detail.