Eleven researchers from Wageningen have received a Veni grant from NWO. In total, NWO awarded 174 grants to researchers from Dutch universities. Each talented researcher will receive over three hundred thousand euros to further develop their research ideas over the next three years.
The Veni is a personal scientific grant, is part of the NWO Talent Programme and is aimed at researchers who have recently obtained their PhDs. They will conduct research within the full breadth of science. The projects receiving funding therefore focus on a wide variety of topics: from the use of algorithms and AI in criminal justice to the role of gut bacteria in our mental health, and from correcting quantum errors to the distribution of colonial profits in the Netherlands between 1850 and 1860.
The Wageningen researchers who received a Veni grant are:
Kelley Leung - Save the bees (and wasps) with extra genes: how polyploidy helps and hinders insect evolution, breeding, and conservation
Polyploidy is the condition of extra chromosome sets. It is disadvantageous for the individual, causing sterility and genetic problems. Yet, for many plants and animals it provided the extra genes important for surviving changing environments and evolution of new species. This research project investigates both the good and bad of polyploidy. By experimentally inducing polyploidy in wasps and bees, it will improve understanding of how polyploidy helped species evolve and survive in the past, is driving species extinctions in the present, and can be used to breed better-performing and environmentally-safer insects to aid future biological control and pollination in agriculture.
Julia Möller - Fate and effect of composted biodegradable plastic and its additives in agricultural soils
Compostable plastic products are perceived as environmentally friendly. However, these compostable plastics are most likely only biodegradable under ideal laboratory conditions, which are often not found in real composting plants. Further, compostable plastics also contain chemicals that are released to the environment over time. The researchers will study if fragments from already composted compostable plastics degrade in an agricultural field, and if these fragments affect plant growth. Additionally, they will check if the chemicals released from compostable plastic products are harmful to plants and earthworms.
Mareike Smolka - How AI researchers and developers imagine better societies?
Policy-makers, corporations, and journalists often present Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the solution to global challenges and as a threat to humanity. Stories of hype and fear make technology-driven futures seem inevitable, which leaves little room for imagining alternatives. This crisis of imagination is particularly pronounced among AI researchers and developers. They usually conceive of new inventions within the boundaries of a technological system, neglecting its societal contexts. Through co-design with citizens and stakeholders, this project enables AI researchers and developers to imagine not only better technologies, but also better societies, so that they can help create the worlds we need.
Jasper Candel - All you can peat - Identifying peat-growth hotspots in river valleys
Peatlands, covering 3% of Earth's surface, store a significant 25% of its carbon. Regenerating peatlands emerges as a proactive solution to address climate change, biodiversity loss, floods, droughts, wildfires and declining water quality. This research focusses on unravelling peat-river dynamics, predicting optimal regeneration conditions and identifying peat-growth hotspots in river valleys. Using global data, a predictive model will be developed, complemented by on-site studies to improve our understanding of the natural conditions where peat-rivers exist. Collaboration with societal partners will lead to identifying regeneration sites in human-altered river valleys, supporting societal impact and future climate resilience.
Pieter Candry - Ecological reinforcement of synthetic microbial communities for high-rate, continuous bioproduction
This project aims to develop a new technological approach to convert organic wastes, such as food waste or crop residues, to biochemicals and biofuels. Two microbes will be paired: one that can decompose complex organic materials, and one that can produce high-value biochemicals. Embedding these together in synthetic biofilms will allow to maximize the efficiency of carbon conversion to product, while also improving the rate at which the product is formed. Overall, this project aims to provide a significant step forward in developing real-world waste-to-product technologies.
Meinou Corstens - Food STructure for Appetite Regulation (FoodSTAR): Digestion control as a driver for satiating processed foods
In the last half-century, enormous changes in our diets resulted in massive overeating. Half of the Dutch are too heavy nowadays! My approach? Focusing on food structure. My research explores how processed food structure affects how fast it is broken down in the digestive tract, and how this can be adjusted for increased fullness. Testing meals with controlled structures will reveal how food processing and digestion levels impact food intake. Additionally, developing a simulated mini-gut will expedite food product design, aiming to control overeating. Together, this research will offer insights into enhancing fullness per calorie consumed.
Ashkan Ghanbarzadeh-Dagheyan - Rethinking CTC Detection: Optimal & Tuneable Photoacoustic Ultrasound Microscopy
Circulating tumour cells (CTC) are among the earliest signs of metastasis, facilitating cancer spread to other organs. Metastasis is responsible for 67% of cancer-related deaths. Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is a method that can help detect CTCs early, and much research has been done on PA detection of melanoma (skin-cancer) CTCs. However, the feasibility of label-free PA detection of CTCs of other cancers is underexplored. In this project, I aim to build a new tuneable photoacoustic-ultrasound microscope (TPUM) to investigate the PA and ultrasound signals of non-melanoma CTCs. This is towards the long-term goal of detecting all CTCs in vivo.
Joao Marques Garcia - Inktelligent Foods - enabling cultivated seafood products
Cultivated meat and seafood are a sustainable and animal-friendly method to produce food using cell culture and offers an alternative to the currently intensive farming and fishing practices. A crucial step in cultivated meat/seafood is the development of cell lines with robust proliferation and differentiation capability. In nature, octopuses display an innate capacity for muscle growth and regeneration. By leveraging their muscle regeneration capacity, I will establish octopus-derived muscle cell lines aiming at producing cultivated octopus meat. The generated knowledge and methodologies could be applied to other species, ultimately enabling, and fostering the cultivated meat and seafood industries.
Annemerel Mol - Chemical Siblings: exploring interactions between toxic Selenium and Sulfur in wastewater to promote recovery
Selenium and sulfur are very similar elements: you could call them chemical siblings. Both are useful as well as harmful: our bodies need them, but in the wrong form or concentration they make us ill. Because they are so similar, they also react with each other, for example in biological removal processes from wastewater. I want to study whether these interactions also make them want to be together in a molecule, or even in a crystal, and whether selenium can 'hitch a ride' with sulfur. That would make recovery of selenium a lot easier, and lead to circular selenium.
Thomas Wagner - Plant-based livers: Engineering organic micropollutant uptake and transformation in constructed wetland plants
Organic micropollutants (OMPs) (pharmaceuticals, PFAS etc.) in surface water are a threat to ecosystem en human health. Many OMPs originate from wastewater treatment plants, where they are not completely removed; Novel post-treatment by a constructed wetland however contributes to additional OMP removal. Nevertheless, it is unclear what happens with OMPs taken up by plants: Are they transformed and stored, or completely degraded? In my Veni I will study the enzymatic transformation of 15 common OMPs in plants and hereby lay the scientific foundation for strategies to enhance plant-mediated OMP removal and prevent accumulation of OMP transformation products in plants.
Pim Willemsen - Salt marshes: where climate change adaptation meets climate change mitigation
We are facing a climate crisis accompanied by biodiversity loss. Sea level rise has a growing impact on low-lying coastal areas, also due to economic activities and population growth. These developments result in a decreasing extent of salt marshes in the coastal zone. Salt marshes are salt-tolerant ecosystems in the intertidal area. These ecosystems can attenuate waves, decrease coastal erosion and sequester carbon, whilst also preserving biodiversity. This research aims to quantify the contribution of constructed salt marshes to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Our findings will enable the sustainable protection of low-lying coastal areas and biodiversity through salt marshes.
