Individual honours
The 2024 Physica Prize was awarded to Institute of Physics and QuSoft researcher Florian Schreck. Schreck receives the prize for his work on Bose Einstein condensates and their applications, such as building a coherent and continuous atom laser.
Gert-Jan Gruter (Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences) was named Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. Gruter was knighted in recognition of his exceptional contributions to sustainable chemistry and his commitment to innovation and societal impact.
The University of Amsterdam awarded a honorary doctorate to ‘Virtual Human Twin’ researcher Liesbet Geris (Informatics Institute). She received the honorary doctorate for her groundbreaking scientific work in the field of in-silico medicine and the Virtual Human Twin, and its integration into clinical practice.
The Dutch Research Council NWO announced that Wim Noorduin (Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences) is the winner of its annual Stairway to Impact Prize. The prize honours scientists who successfully translate their research findings into solutions that address societal challenges or generate economic benefits.
The 2024 Mid-Career Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society was awarded to astrophysicist (at the Institute of Physics) Samaya Nissanke, for the development of novel techniques to extract fundamental physics from astronomical data, paving the way for the era of gravitational-wave multi-messenger astronomy.
Max Welling at the Informatics Institute has won the prestigious ICLR Test of Time Award 2024 for his groundbreaking work on 'Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes'. This research has had a lasting impact on the field of probabilistic modeling and deep learning.
Henkjan Honing, researcher in Music Cognition at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, has been awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC), in recognition of his pioneering contributions to the field of music perception and cognition.
The UvA Honorary Medallions are awarded to people whose initiatives, ideas and solutions have had an enormous impact and have brought a lot to the UvA as an organisation. Arne Janssen (Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics) is a pioneer in the field of sustainable crop protection and the translation of fundamental research into practice. The impact of his work is wide-ranging: at the UvA, in the Netherlands and worldwide.
During the annual Dutch ‘ribbon shower’ preceding King Willem-Alexander's birthday, emeritus professor Rolf Bak of the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau in April 2024. Bak received the royal award in his hometown of Texel for his major contribution to research into coral reefs. Sadly, in November 2024 Rolf Bak passed away.