Bianca Nijhof is co-chair of the Foundation Board of Workplace Pride and next to this she is the Managing Director of the Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP). NWP is a network of Dutch water organisations, working together on innovative, inclusive and future-proof solutions. A strong collaborative alliance of more than 180 of the most entrepreneurial and innovative companies, renowned knowledge institutes, involved NGOs and experienced governmental organisations make NWP the first point of call for anyone seeking Dutch water expertise. With more than 20 years of experience in the international water arena, NWP catalyzes successful local, national and global collaborations to help solve water issues, driving our water ambitions into the future.

Bianca is a proven and successful leader in sustainability with an extensive network across businesses, governmental organizations, and NGOs. She is a member of the Strategic Council from the International Water Association, sits in the Advisory Panel to the Capitals Coalition, was chair of the Advisory Board for the Araguaia Corridor Cost-Benefit Analysis Study from the Black Jaguar Foundation, is the SDG6 ambassador for Data for Good platform and is a member of the Sustainability Commission of the NKBV (Dutch Mountaineering Association).

Professor Richard van de Sanden is a research group leader at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER/NWO-I), this year’s host, where he was director from 2011 until July 2020. He is also the scientific director of the Eindhoven Institute for Renewable Energy Systems (EIRES) and a professor at the Department of Applied Physics of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He is a member of several (scientific) advisory boards for (inter-)national programs, institutes and departments. Since 2017, he has been the chairman of the advisory committee on Electrochemical Conversion and Materials (ECCM), and an active member of the Energy committee of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC).

Richard will elaborate on work being done at Differ, where they are working on a future in which clean energy will be available to everybody, anywhere in the world. At Differ, investigations are being done on how we can realize the enormous potential of generating clean power from fusion energy, the same way of releasing energy that takes place in the sun. Richard himself heads research on renewable energy-driven chemical conversion and will talk about his work in this field.

Alfred Nijenhuis is a Senior Consultant at Arcadis. With 27,000 employees in 70 countries, Arcadis delivers sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. Alfred works as an area developer in the energy transition, and a.o. has worked on hydrogen heated residential areas, large-scale electrolyzing, and geothermic energy.

The energy transition is a development that stems from the Climate treaty. To prevent large-scale changes in our climate, we need to reduce our carbon emissions dramatically. That is a big effort for our society, for which we won’t succeed by only having one alternative for fossil energy. The new system needs to consist of several sources and energy carriers. As in our society, will diversifying make our system stronger and more robust.

Annelies Boerman is a lecturer and researcher for the electorate of sustainable energy systems at Saxion university of applied sciences. Her main subject is systems integration. This is about the design of reliable energy systems of the future where the generation of sustainable energy and changing demand patterns are important factors.

She has a master’s degree in applied mathematics from TU Delft, and she has worked in a variety of application areas in mathematical physics. In her free time, Annelies is involved in various local initiatives in sustainable development, most notably the development of a solar park that is owned by the local community in a cooperative organization.

Being highly motivated for acting against climate change and for supporting sustainable development, she decided that she also wanted to work on these themes in a professional context. This has resulted in her present assignment, where she combines her mathematical modeling skills and motivation for sustainable development.

Camille Burrer is the Organizational Change Manager and Chair of Green ASML. She is a French citizen living in the Netherlands since 2012 and joined ASML in 2017. Her role as a change manager is to engage the human factor in transformation programs. In 2018 she joined the Green ASML community, first as an active member working on projects and then joining the Board as the Chair. Since then she has focused on stakeholder management, building resources, and getting executive-level sponsorship for the platform.

Green ASML is a bottom-up initiative created in 2017 by a group of ASML employees. It aims to raise awareness about environmental sustainability while respecting social sustainability.
Since then the community has grown at a rapid pace, now numbering over 1,000 members. We are officially sponsored by the head of R&D and endorsed by the ASML Board of Management.

In this presentation, she’ll talk more about who they are, what projects and activities they are passionate about and How Green ASML can work together with ASML’s Diversity & Inclusion platforms

Margot Weijnen is a member of the Executive Board of NWO (Dutch Research council), and chairperson of the NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES). Besides this, she holds the chair of process and energy systems engineering at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology. On behalf of NWO, Margot will sign the Declaration of Amsterdam, underlining the importance of LGBTIQ+ diversity for NWO and its commitment to further improve the position of LGBTIQ+ employees.

Dr. Jeffrey Welser is Vice President of Exploratory Science and University Partnerships for IBM.
Jeff will talk about five areas of research that IBM recently unveiled, which they foresee being used to enable faster scientific breakthroughs and materials discovery around addressing climate change and environmental challenges. He believes that diversity of thought is important in reaching those objectives.
Jeff will also share with us how being LGBT+ has helped him during his career, and how he can help to support the LGBT+ community by being the COO of IBM Research and an Out Executive at IBM.