Nico Hendrickx receives the Christiaan Huygens Science Prize for physics for his PhD research. The jury, set up by the KNAW, decorates him because: “His thesis has become a standard in the semiconductor quantum technology community.” The award, a bronze statue and a cash prize of €10,000, was presented at the Oude Kerk in Voorburg.

About Hendrickx

Dr Nico Willem Hendrickx (Groningen, 13 April 1994) received his PhD at the Delft University of Technology on 12 July 2021 with the thesis ‘Qubit arrays in germanium’. His supervisor was Lieven Vandersypen and his co-supervisor was Menno Veldhorst. Hendrickx received a Bachelor of Science in applied physics from the University of Twente in 2014. A Master of Science in the same field followed there in 2017. Subsequently, he obtained a PhD in Delft for the aforementioned thesis in the field of experimental physics. Nico then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at IBM Research in Zürich and recently returned to Delft. He is now leading a project aimed at further developing and scaling-up germanium quantum technology.

Jury chair Maria Antonietta Loi hands winner Nico Willem Hendrickx the bronze statue of Christiaan Huygens (Photo: Paul Voorham)

The jury

Each year, the jury is composed by the KNAW. The chair this year was Prof Dr Maria Antonietta Loi, Professor of Photophysics and Optoelectronics at the University of Groningen. The other members were Prof Daniel Bonn, Professor of Complex Fluids at the University of Amsterdam and Prof Kobus Kuipers, Nanophotonic Structures at TU Delft.

Support

The work of the foundation is actively supported by Shell, ASML and TNO, organisations that have an affinity with Christiaan Huygens’ work and the fields of science in which he excelled.