Wim van der Hoek Award celebrates 20th anniversary
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Wim van der Hoek Award, we will dive into history by posting interviews (in Dutch) with previous winners.
The Wim van het Hoek award (also known as the Constructors Award) was introduced in 2006 to mark the 80th birthday of the Dutch doyen of design engineering principles, Wim van der Hoek (1924-2019). Under the auspices of DSPE, the award named after him is presented each year to the person with the best graduation project in the field of design in mechanical engineering at a Dutch or Belgian university of technology or university of applied sciences. Traditionally, the award ceremony takes place in November, at the end of the second day of the Precision Fair, the annual highlight of the Dutch precision engineering community.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Wim van der Hoek Award, we will dive into history by posting interviews (in Dutch) with previous winners. These interviews were published by Dutch professional mechanical engineering magazine Constructeur, which kindly gave permission for republication. The winners talk about their engineering interests and education, starting from their childhood, and on their professional career thus far, reflecting on Wim van der Hoek’s design principles and the impact of the award.
In 2012, Stefan Spanjer was the seventh winner, for his graduation work at the renowned Yale University, on the design of underactuated fingers for a robot hand. After graduation, he explored starting a robotics company, which, in 2014, resulted in Kite Robotics, focused on developing cable-driven robots for the cleaning of glass facades of tall buildings. Since then, Kite Robotics has carried out successful projects in the Netherlands and abroad (Fleet Street, London). Please check the full interview, either the original Dutch version or the English translation.
