At this NWO debate, Marcel Levi (President of NWO), Jolanda Kluin (Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery at ErasmusMC and AWTI board member), Laurens Dassen (leader of parliamentary party Volt) and Robert-Jan Smits (President of Eindhoven University of Technology) discussed the conclusions of the Draghi report. Among other things, they stressed the discrepancy between the need to invest in our knowledge and innovation (also endorsed by the cabinet) on the one hand, and the huge cuts in education and science on the other.
Wim Noorduin, scientific group leader at AMOLF and professor at the University of Amsterdam, was interviewed about his experiences, bringing to market a lead test spray. Wim: “I read about lead water pipes and found out that 1 in 3 children in the world has lead poisoning. That’s a whopping 800 million children. One of the biggest problems is to find the lead. Even in very small amounts, lead can cause permanent brain damage or cardiovascular disease. Building on my work on semiconductors, I then thought, ‘What if I could convert lead into a material that behaves like a semiconductor, so that the lead will reflect light? Then you can see where it is and do something about it.”
Wim proved able to turn his vision into reality: together with his PhD student Lukas Helmbrecht and other group members, he developed a spray that makes materials containing lead reflect light, even lead in very small amounts. Given the seriousness of lead poisoning worldwide, Wim realized ‘I have to do something with this finding’.
With help from AMOLF, Wim approached NWO about his invention, receiving a grant to explore a startup. He later successfully applied for a loan, so he didn’t have to seek outside investors. Together with Lukas Heimbrecht and Jeroen van den Bosch, Wim founded the startup Lumetallix in order to turn the results into a practical kit.
Wim: “I didn’t want to sell the invention because I wanted to avoid the proceeds going to the wrong people. I want (potential future) profits to be used to create scale, so we can deploy the product in parts of the world where this problem is greatest.”
You can watch the interview with Wim on YouTube (in Dutch). Here you also find the panel debat.
