Herry Nijhuis new director Technology Foundation STW and future director AES domain of the new NWO
With effect from 1 October 2016 Herry Nijhuis (1959) will be the director of Technology Foundation STW. He succeeds Cor de Boer, who has temporarily held this position since the departure of Eppo Bruins at the end of last year. On 1 January 2017 the activities of Technology Foundation STW will be transferred to the Applied Engineering Sciences domain of the new NWO. Nijhuis will then become the director of this domain.
Dr. H.H. (Herry) Nijhuis (1959) currently works at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), which is part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. He is team manager of the Management Team Industry, Agro and Financing, where he is responsible for the portfolios Agro & Food Chains and Green Deal. Employees in his team support the various partners in realising the objectives in two energy covenants with the food industry and a number of primary agricultural sectors. In addition, his team members are involved in the realisation of the top sectors policy and various business regulations.
Nijhuis studied chemical engineering at the University of Twente. He gained his doctorate there for his thesis entitled 'Removal of trace organics from water by pervaporation. A technical and economic analysis'. His career started at the former research institute ATO DLO, which is now part of Wageningen University and Research Centre. Amongst other things he was head of the departments 'Interface and Separation Technology' and 'Functional Ingredients'. In 2000 he moved to NOVEM, which later became SenterNovem, then AgentschapNL and eventually the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, where he has held various positions. From 2006–2009 he was seconded as a senior programme manager and deputy director to the fledgling Dutch Separation Technology Institute (DSTI), which later became part of ISPT (Institute for Sustainable Process Technology).
Herry Nijhuis is a board member of the Dutch Association of Process Technologists and is a member of the jury for the Koning Willem I plaquette for sustainable entrepreneurship, an award from DNB (De Nederlandsche Bank).
New NWO: new organisation and new governance
With effect from 1 January 2017, the nine divisions that NWO currently consists of will be clustered into four domains, and the number of boards within NWO will be reduced. At the top of the organisation there will be a new Executive Board that will consist of the chair, a member for operations and finance, and four scientific members who will also be the chairs of the domain boards. The Executive Board will be responsible for the integral strategy and programming of the domains and allocating the budget across the domains. The Executive Board will also determine the long-term basic budgets for the institutes. These changes will enable NWO to position itself more strategically, to increase its decisiveness and organisational capabilities, to deploy funds more flexibly, and to increasingly work with a single coherent programming.
On 3 June it was announced that professor Stan Gielen will become chair of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) with effect from 1 January 2017.
On 15 June NWO announced the names of the directors of the three other future domains of NWO.