Thursday March 19th

19:45 live music by Bird of a Feather
20:15 speakers
Café Loburg

The developments currently taking place in the production of sensors are mind boggling. Not only the detection limits have been improved greatly, but also many sensors can currently already be produced at large scale and at reasonable cost. This will influence and affect our daily lives, especially when these sensors are applied to personal health.

In this Science Café Prof. dr. Menno Prins and dr. Aart van Amerongen will address the state-of-the-art in sensing and diagnostics with respect to personalised drug dosing, so-called therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Aart van Amerongen will focus on the consequences of differences in the metabolism of drugs between people and on Point-of-Care diagnostics that can be used by patients at home and allow for wireless transfer of results to the doctor in attendance. Menno Prins will discuss innovative technologies for continuous monitoring, including applications in healthcare and industrial processing.

Aart van Amerongen is a senior scientist at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research and is heading the group BioSensing & Diagnostics. The group focuses on the development of rapid, multi-analyte diagnostic platforms and on applications in fields ranging from primary production to human health. He is one of the founders and organisers of the conference series Rapid Methods Europe of which the 13th event will be held in Amsterdam from 2-4 November 2020.

Menno Prins is professor at Eindhoven University of Technology. He investigates technologies for the continuous monitoring of biomolecules. He co-founded Helia Biomonitoring, a spin-off company for the development of continuous biosensing technologies. He founded and organizes SensUs, the annual international student competition on biosensors for health (www.sensus.org), with student teams participating from universities in Europe, North-America, Asia, and Africa.

Thursday February 20th

19:45 live music by Wolke
20:15 speakers
Café Loburg

For half a century now gross domestic product (GDP) – and in particular, its growth – has been the main focal point for public policy. In fact, GDP has almost become synonymous with the “success” of a country. However, is GDP really a reliable measure for the wellbeing of citizens? Does this continuous economic growth not inevitably lead to overshoot of our planetary boundaries? Most importantly, how can we transition towards a society where wellbeing and sustainability are the core goals, rather than economic growth?
In this Science Café, our guest speakers Rutger Hoekstra and Caroline van Leenders will try to answer these questions, and will paint a picture of what is needed to transition towards a sustainable wellbeing-economy.

Rutger Hoekstra is an expert on metrics for well-being and sustainability. He is the author of Replacing GDP by 2030 and the founder of MetricsForTheFuture.com, a consultancy company that helps governments look beyond GDP and companies Beyond-Profit. He works as a guest researcher at Leiden University.

Caroline van Leenders works for the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, RVO) and is, with more than 20 years of experience, a true expert on sustainable transitions. She has written several books on the topic, and was featured as number 53 in Trouw Green Top 100 in 2016 (and since then, she is part of the jury).