Since 2020, Delft Bioengineering Institute (BEI) organizes a cross-campus competition for MSc students who performed remarkably well at their graduation projects in bioengineering. This year, nine very impressive theses were submitted. After a strenuous review and discussion, the jury agreed that Risa Togo (MSc Bionanoscience & MSc Mechanical Engineering), Tim Holtgrefe (MSc Bionanoscience) and Nerea Alvarez (MSc Biomedical Engineering) have delivered the most innovative, interdisciplinary bioengineering projects of 2025. On top of eternal fame, they will receive personal cash prizes of ¤1000, ¤500 and ¤250.
Risa Togo
For her joint MSc thesis (Nanobiology and Biomedical Engineering), Risa earned the exceptional grade of 10.0. Bridging biophysics and bioengineering, her work focused on collagen networks, whose complex hierarchical structure underlies their unique mechanical properties and plays a critical role in health and disease, including fibrosis, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Risa employed a highly innovative approach combining rheology with in situ confocal imaging to link network microstructure to bulk shear mechanics, addressing a long-standing challenge in quantitatively analyzing dense fibrous networks. Throughout the project, she performed at a level comparable to a PhD candidate, demonstrating exceptional scientific maturity and originality.
Tim Holtgrefe
Tim pioneered a novel, computational approach to protein evolution by mining and modeling over 30,000 rhodopsins with AlphaFold, analyzing structural and electrochemical features relevant to genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs). By parametrizing and clustering these models, he identified groups enriched for voltage-sensitive proteins and experimentally validated his predictions with an unprecedented success rate. This work has fundamentally changed the approach of the Daan Brinks Lab where it was embedded and is being incorporated into a paper. Beyond this breakthrough, Tim excelled in theory, wet-lab work, and optical data acquisition, demonstrating rare disruptive creativity and all’around excellence in nanobiology.
Nerea Alvarez
Nerea-s thesis represents a significant advance in precision brain interfacing and exemplifies interdisciplinary bioengineering. She designed and fabricated transfer-free multilayer graphene microelectrode arrays on transparent substrates and, for the first time, demonstrated reliable extracellular spiking from 10 µm electrodes with high signal-to-noise ratio in in-vitro platforms. Her work integrates materials engineering, microfabrication, instrumentation, and neuroscience, addressing the growing need for high-resolution, multimodal neural mapping. Importantly, it establishes a scalable alternative to manual graphene transfer techniques. The impact of this work has already shaped ongoing research both in the group it was embedded in as in those of collaborators, and the results are under consideration at Advanced Science.