Celebrating 10 years of directorship Huib Bakker

After serving as director of AMOLF for 10 years, Huib Bakker stepped down on December 31. Last week, AMOLF celebrated his directorship with a special symposium.

Bruno Ehrler (current director of AMOLF) opened the symposium by thanking Huib for all his work and for leaving AMOLF in such great shape. Huib’s directorship spanned several challenging periods, such as the COVID pandemic years, when it was difficult to keep everyone safe and connected. Over the years, Huib paid particular attention to safeguarding the special atmosphere at AMOLF, with a strong sense of community.

Speakers

Huib had asked the organizers of the symposium to highlight AMOLF’s current scientific achievements. Thus, the following AMOLF group leaders were invited to present at the symposium:  Wiebke Albrecht (Hybrid Nanosystems), Martin van Hecke (Mechanical Metamaterials), Kristina Ganzinger (Physics of Cellular Interactions), Tom Shimizu (Physics of Behavior), Wim Noorduin (Self-Organizing Matter), and Paula van Tijn (AMOLF Institute Manager).

The speakers combined their personal memories of Huib with the stories of the development of their research. They all emphasized how much they appreciated Huib’s advice and support when important decisions had to be made.

For instance, Wiebke shared how Huib helped bring the SEM microscope to AMOLF.  And Martin reflected on the years he served as management team member: “During Covid we talked on zoom endlessly. I tried to write a proposal about the behavior of a crumpled sheet. Huib gave me feedback and encouragement. Together we started thinking about information processing, which later on proved to be so important for AMOLF’s research program.”

As the final speaker, Paula gave the audience a look behind the scenes. She worked with Huib for almost 10 years and shared many fond memories, such as the numerous Christmas stories Huib told at the famous AMOLF Christmas lunches. She also reflected on how they worked together to support a growing institute with an increasing number of people, while remaining within the same building.

The afternoon concluded with drinks and speeches by Marcel Levi, Marco de Baar, and Albert Polman.

Huib will continue working at AMOLF as group leader of the Ultrafast Spectroscopy group.

Find out more

To read more about Huib’s research go to: https://amolf.nl/research-groups/ultrafast-spectroscopy