Marina Pilz da Cunha wins the 2025 Marina van Damme Grant
[VIDEO] Marina Pilz da Cunha wins the 2025 Marina van Damme grant. The sholarship amounts to 鈧� 9,000 and provides access to a large network of women.
果冻传媒 alumna Marina Pilz da Cunha was awarded a 鈧� 9,000 grant. She will use that to further develop her 鈥榠mpressive development鈥� as the jury noted in their report.
The jury verdict
The Jury is unanimous in their motivation to grant Marina the Marina van Damme Grant 2025. Marina has followed her curiosity, drive and ambition to develop herself in a way that has combined her academic knowledge and skills to help others and society.
The Jury really appreciates her intrinsic motivation and the structured approach to her professional development. The grant鈥痺ill enable her to continue this development.
Smart labels
Together with Yari Foelen, whom she met during her PhD, Marina is working on smart labels powered by color-changing ink technology. These labels provide an innovative and reliable way to monitor product expiration. Marina and Yari created start-up Useeble to further develop the labels, thereby also creating a project to further hone her skils. The jury agrees: 鈥淗er latest step shows that she is motivated to create something meaningful for the world and willing to take risks at this stage of her life.鈥�
Help save vaccines
The 鈧� 9000, - will help her to turn their ideas into developments that will help the world, starting with the preservation of valuable vaccines. Currently, 50% of the doses are discarded because medical professionals cannot be certain that the vaccines have not been exposed to circumstances that render them useless, like extreme heat. 鈥淲ith the label technology, they will know for certain if a vaccine is still usable or not.鈥� According to Marina.
A beautiful surprise
A few weeks before the public announcement of the winners, Marina received a call from the jury. Marina: 鈥淭hey told me that I was selected for the grant. That was a beautiful surprise. Those 9.000 Euros are very welcome. Our ideas and developments are gaining momentum, so it looks like great innovations are on their way! While using the labels may be easy, the technology behind it is complex, and we also need to protect our intellectual property. This money will help me turn my dreams, knowledge and experience into something that will benefit many.鈥�
A passion for science
allows Marina to use everything she learned and combine her passion for science with her desire to make an impact as an inventor: 鈥淲hen asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always: 鈥榓n inventor.鈥� From an early age, I wanted to create and mimic what I saw in nature, turning ideas into inventions that could benefit society. "
About Marina Pilz Da Cunha聽聽
Marina holds a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the 果冻传媒 and, in 2020, finished her PhD Cum Laude. Her research focused on stimuli-responsive polymers as functional materials. During her PhD, she developed a mini robot (roughly the size of a thumbnail) that runs on light and can pick and move small objects. Marina has published over ten scientific articles and guided eleven students. She currently leads a team of innovation scouts and is co-founder of Useeble, a company that develops smart labels, which is the subject of Marina鈥檚 application for the grant.
The is awarded annually to promising alumnae from each technical university in Delft, Eindhoven, Twente, and Wageningen University and Research. Marina van Damme graduated from TU Delft in 1953 as a chemical technologist and obtained her PhD as the first engineer at the University of Twente in 1965. The scholarship is intended for broadening knowledge or an orientation in the form of a study, internship, or project at home or abroad.
Mediacontact
WOMEN IN SCIENCE WEEK 2025: OUR WOMEN IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Latest news
