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How do you make food that not only tastes good but is also healthy? How do you prevent industrial disasters like ‘Chemiepack Moerdijk’? And how can you store CO2 properly and safely? These are issues that are tackled in the Earth, Environmental and Life Sciences expertise area as some 800 people, from molecular biologist to physicists, chemists, food and food safety specialists to earth scientists search for solutions.
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Diederik Zijderveld, Managing Director of the Earth, Environmental and Life Sciences expertise area: "We supply the expertise for the projects executed within the themes so that we can tackle the societal issues. Like assessing the safety of food and new chemical substances while trying to avoid the need for animal testing by, for example, developing alternative tests. We have, in this respect, developed a test that uses slaughter material. Another example is the Urban Strategy model that makes it easier to draw up plans for motorways or residential neighbourhoods, for instance. This model identifies what the impact of the decisions are for the surroundings in 'real time': traffic, air quality, noise pollution, safety."
"TNO’s added value in such projects? It is not the primarily scientific issues we want to tackle but the societal issues. And we use scientific knowledge to do this, helping industry and government to innovate. Such as helping major oil companies to get more oil out of their fields or, in healthcare, looking at how we can use the results of scientific publications to help people with metabolic syndrome, overweight, diabetes or heart and vascular diseases. We want to do this in cooperation with insurers, therapists, pharmaceutical industry and patient organisations. And we have a number of internationally reputed people in house in fields like system biology, air quality, organic chemistry and toxicology. Customers know where to find us. Whether it’s the food industry, oil companies or municipalities, we know what they do and how they work. This is why they trust us."
"My personal drive is to make scientific research applicable in society. I also want TNO to be a springboard for talent. Our best people have to pick up the challenge later on somewhere else. As manager I want to attract top experts who can be deployed in the various themes within TNO."
