Jacek Fiutowski and IRCA receive BHJ Award
A happy and proud Jacek Fiutowski won the BHJ award as ‘Young researcher of the year’ on Friday, 2 November. The prize is given to SDU Sonderburg staff members below the age of 40. Jacek has asserted himself with ground-breaking research that has been filling front pages in acknowledged research magazines. Innovation Research Cluster Alsion (IRCA) received 100.000 kroner from the foundation.
- I am happy that I am so young that I can win the prize as ’Young researcher of the year’. At the same time, I’m also happy that our research here at SDU Sonderborg now is so mature that more and more industrial partners now see a large value in cooperating with us.
This is how his speech of thanks ran at the prize-giving at Alsion when Jacek Fiutowski received 25.000 kroner from the BHJ Foundation. The young, polish researcher has a broad background within nanophysics where he covers the entire range from theory, simulation to fabrication. During the recent years he dedicated his work to bridging the gap between the university environment and the surrounding industry.
One example for this is his status as project leader for the project CheckNano, in which Jacek together with other researchers at NanoSYD and Nanooptics is going to develop a chip prototype for the identification of very small and thus dangerous nano particles in cosmetics and foods. For this project, about eight million kroner funding have been allocated earlier this year from Interreg Deutschland-Danmark with means from the European Regional Development Fund.
IRCA wins Innovation Award
The BHJ Foundation also handed out the Innovation Award in connection with the event at Alsion. This prize went to the Innovation and Research Cluster Alsion (IRCA) which was represented by Oliver Niebuhr (Faculty of Engineering), Susanne Gretzinger (Faculty of Social Sciences), Kerstin Fischer (Faculty of Humanities) and Serguei Chiriaev (Faculty of Engineering).
IRCA was founded in 2015 with the aim to promote SDU Sonderborg on a local, regional, national and international level. The amalgamation managed to establish innovative research areas based on different disciplines and across faculties at SDU Sonderborg. Also IRCA was to receive 25.000 kroner from the BHJ Foundation, but the Foundation’s representative could - as a happy surprise – inform that the prize had been increased to quadruple, so it added up to 100.000 kroner in total.
After the award from the BHJ Foundation, the MCI Industry Day was launched at which companies had the possibility to be presented to a selection of the research that SDU Sonderborg is involved in.