The Netherland-America Foundation’s Post

100,000 people may be just one second of Google traffic but in terms of early detection of lung cancer it is a dramatic figure for both patients and their families. Last night during a 4TU.alumni event in San Francisco, UT alumnus Vincent Duindam shared details about his work on Intuitive's Ion robotic bronchoscope from first prototypes through a clinical study to commercial launch. Incredible to think that experiences spanning not only San Francisco in the USA and Brisbane in Australia but also Delft and Enschede contributed to this amazing development in medical robotics.   Vincent’s stimulating talk as well as those by fellow alumni Twan Kamp (TU/e) from Phillips Hue, Magdalena Preciado López (TU Delft) from Calico Labs and Pauline Teunissen (Wageningen) from IFF illustrated through personal stories that global innovation paths often begin or cross through the four technical universities of the Netherlands!   With a crowd of over 50 4TU alumni filling the 31st floor of the Dutch Consulate it was also great to see the wide range of participants in the room. For example, there was a UT student who had just arrived in San Francisco a month ago for an internship with a local company as part of the Holland in the Valley programme and was looking for new connections. Or a recently relocated TU/e alumnus setting up operations from scratch on the West Coast for their Dutch employer exploring a cool idea of doing this as part of a ‘cohort’ of alumni companies in the same situation and leveraging their collective knowledge.   Our alumni offices organized the first shared activities outside of the Netherlands exactly ten years ago with a week-long, five city, seven events ‘USA Alumni Tour’ that also included a gathering 'here' at the Dutch Consulate. It’s wonderful to see that today the local 4TU network in San Francisco of over 1000 alumni remain as energetic and welcoming as then with the group now representing an invaluable strategic component in the global reach of our universities 💪   Many thanks to everyone who helped make last night's event a success - our alumni speakers, NL Innovations Attaché Walter de Wit for delivering opening words, the amazing team at the SF NL Consulate General and all the alumni who were able to join us ❤️ Next stop on this USA tour … Sunny San Jose, here we come 😊   University of Twente | Delft University of Technology | Eindhoven University of Technology | Wageningen University & Research | 4TU.Federation | 4TU.Alumni  | Innovatie Attaché Netwerk / IA (Netherlands Innovation Network) | Netherlands Consulate in San Francisco The 4TU.alumni event team: TU Delft - Anouk Dijkstal, Jens Kok; UT - Joe Laufer; TU Eindhoven - Mayke Oldenburg & WUR - Denise Spiekerman