Prof. Dr. Ilse Aben (SRON/VU) received the Stevin Prize this year for the societal impact she is achieving with the Dutch satellite instrument TROPOMI, to which Holland High Tech also contributed through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) funding. The award includes a €1.5 million prize, which will allow for further in-depth methane research, including at landfills worldwide.
Feite Hofman, Director-General of Higher Education, Vocational Training, Science and Emancipation at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, presented the Spinoza and Stevin Prizes on Tuesday, October 14, at the Royal Theatre in The Hague. The prizes are the highest awards in science and are intended to recognize and encourage researchers and their work. While the Spinoza Prize emphasizes scientific work and fundamental questions, the Stevin Prize honors societal impact and inspiration for young researchers. Both awards highlight outstanding, world-class scientists.
Stevin Prize for work with satellite instrument TROPOMI
Ilse Aben, senior scientist at SRON and endowed professor at VU University Amsterdam, is one of the founders of satellite instruments to detect greenhouse gas emissions like methane. She has also provided governments and companies with the means to take action against such leaks. In doing so, she has made a unique and indispensable contribution to the fight against climate change. Thanks to her pioneering work from space, with TROPOMI, funded in part by Holland High Tech, invisible problems are being made visible and solved.
TROPOMI continuously scans the Earth for methane leaks, among other things. The measuring instrument features revolutionary optical technology, allowing it to produce highly accurate images every second. This allows it to measure greenhouse gas concentrations and air pollution down to the city level. Aben and her team use smart algorithms to convert the collected data into information about methane leaks, but also, for example, emissions of the harmful substance carbon monoxide.
Stevin Prize recipient Ilse Aben talks about the added value of the TROPOMI satellite:
In one day, the satellite takes 20,000 million measurements of all kinds of substances, including methane. Alongside CO2, this is a powerful greenhouse gas, which is responsible for a third of global warming. Science has a crucial role to play here. Before we launched Tropomi, we had no idea. A total revolution has taken place in our field, and it is crucial to be able to respond more easily to new developments, which is possible with this research funding.
Why is awarding the prizes important?
The Stevin Prize has been awarded since 2018. Both the Stevin Prize and the Spinoza Prize encourage further research. The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) established these prizes to raise the profile of excellent scientists and to stimulate world-class research in the Netherlands.
Watch the video with Ilse Aben in which she explains how she not only makes invisible problems visible, but also solves them:
