Catching up with... Jetty van Ginkel

This year's Marina van Damme Scholarship will be awarded on 16 May 2018. Dr. Marina van Damme will again be attending in person to welcome all the nominees. Last year's presentation of the grant, in June 2017, had a highly unexpected result. Because of the exceptionally high level of the nominees, Marina van Damme decided to reward not one but two of them with the full grant of €9,000.

Jetty van Ginkel was one of the two winners. A year later, she now explains what she has achieved with the grant.

 ‘After receiving it, I was of course delighted but also quite surprised. I felt I had written a very feasible plan, but because of that I thought it was a little bit boring. But that's actually what ensured that it met all the criteria.’

Jetty graduated in 2010 at the University of Twente, specialising in tissue cultivation, before going on to conduct research in Bionanoscience for her PhD at TU Delft. While completing her PhD, she also explored the issue of how to market your research. She was so fascinated by that process that she decided to continue her career in that direction. She has been working at the Erasmus MC's Technology Transfer Office since September 2016. There, she supports scientists in marketing their inventions.

‘In order to develop my specialist knowledge, I applied for the Marina van Damme Scholarship to pursue a qualification as a Registered Technology Transfer Professional (RTTP).’

Jetty started this programme in September 2017 and has already attended her first courses. So far, everything has gone just as she expected. But the RTTP qualification has not been the only benefit of receiving the grant.  As Jetty says, the Marina van Damme Network is a group of highly interesting and motivated women.

‘I've now had the opportunity to attend several meetings with the Marina van Damme Network. Although everyone has a different background, we have a lot in common with each other. It's very inspiring to find out how other women got where they are now and what plans they have for the future. It's great to share experiences and ideas in this group.’

For the future, Jetty plans to continue with her efforts to build bridges between science and the market. In her view, there are still far too many inventions that society is not yet fully able to benefit from. At the last meeting of the Marina van Damme Network, she even applied to be a member of the committee. ‘This will give me a glimpse behind the scenes of the network and hopefully enables me to contribute to this great network.’

Jetty's advice for the 2018 winner is to take full advantage of the network behind the Marina van Damme Scholarship. ‘I look forward to seeing her under the apple tree with Marina van Damme this summer!’