State Secretary Sander Dekker visits FOM spin-offs at Hannover Messe
Today the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, Sander Dekker, visited the Hannover Messe technology fair. He visited the spin-offs of the FOM institutes Nikhef and AMOLF, which are presenting themselves in the Holland High Tech House, and talked to them about the increasing interaction between fundamental research and industry.
In the Holland High Tech House, three spin-offs from the FOM institutes Nikhef and AMOLF are present: Amsterdam Scientific Instruments (ASI), Omics2Image and InnoSeis. These companies gave a short pitch for the State Secretary. Nikhef programme leader Jo van den Brand and Hans Roeland Poolman – former Nikhef employee and now an investor and entrepreneur – explained how fundamental research can already give a boost to innovation in the short-term and produce start-ups.
Van den Brand: "Most people think that fundamental research produces results in the longer term: theories that provide applications for smartphones, satellites or the Internet a hundred years later. It can, however, go much faster. For example, during the first few years of our scientific programme for the detection of gravitational waves we developed seismic instrumentation. This turned out to be very interesting for the oil and gas industry. Therefore we are now launching the instrumentation onto the market via the spin-off InnoSeis."
Spin-off companies are often involved in the production of the scientific instrumentation because that is becoming increasingly more complex and large-scale. Poolman: "Because science always operates at the limits of what is possible, new technologies are evolving. High-tech start-ups play a vital role in bridging the gap to new applications in other scientific disciplines as well as in industrial innovations."
About the Hannover Messe
The three FOM institutes AMOLF, DIFFER and Nikhef and the NWO institutes ASTRON, SRON, NIOZ present themselves at the technology fair Hannover Messe 2014. On behalf of NWO, the institutes are present from 6 to 11 April in the Holland High Tech House in Hall 2 Research & Technology. This year the Netherlands is the partner country for the Hannover Messe and Dutch high-tech knowledge and products are under the international spotlight. The Messe was be opened by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Mark Rutte. For more information please see the NWO website.