Who will be the winner of the Prince Friso Engineering Award? And who will win the Public Award? You can now vote for one of the three nominees: Eelco Osse, Maja Rudinac and Almer van der Stoel.

For the fifth consecutive year, the Royal Netherlands Society of Engineers (KIVI) is to present the Prince Friso Engineering Award this spring. The nominees are three outstanding engineers with excellent technical skills, who also stand out for their clear vision, sense of enterprise and innovative capacity. There is also a Public Award, for which the voting procedure has now been opened. 

The three candidates for the 2019 Prince Friso Engineering Award are:

Would you like to vote for the Public Award? Your vote can be cast on the KIVI voting page. The voting procedure closes on 17 March. 

The results will be announced on Monday 18 March during the Day of the Engineer at ASML in Veldhoven, the Netherlands.


PRINCE FRISO

Prince Friso's name has been linked to the Engineer of the Year Award since 2015. According to the Royal Netherlands Society of Engineers (KIVI) that organises the award, Friso's inspiring inheritance gives the award extra cachet, while his name is a reminder of the social significance of engineering. The award is presented to the engineer who is distinctive in terms of innovation, entrepreneurship, personality and social impact. Prince Friso manifested himself in all these aspects, which is why it is so apt that his name be attached to the award.

Prince Friso was a mechanical engineer in aerospace technology and also a business economist. He had a strong interest in the interface between technology and organisation. In 2004, he spoke at the merger conference of KIVI and NIRIA (the former Netherlands Institute for Registered Engineers) about the importance of translating scientific knowledge into practical applications. 'Academic freedom is extremely important, but must not result in non-committal academia,' said the Prince on a subject that has not lost any of its significance. Prince Friso was one of the Directors of TNO Space, co-founder of the MRI centre in Amsterdam and Chief Financial Officer of Urenco. He was also actively involved in organisations that promote the importance of technology, including KIVI, Jet-Net and the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT). He passed away in 2013 at the age of 44 following a tragic skiing accident.

If you found this article interesting, subscribe for free to our weekly newsletter!