"WHY DID YOU JOIN THE TEAM?"
11/05/2020
My story
Eileen Morée
“Hi there! My name is Eileen, I am 21 years old and in my 3rd year of my bachelor Sustainable Innovation. A little over a year ago I decided I wanted to join a team. I got tired of having theoretical knowledge, but not having the opportunity to apply it to something that truly mattered to me. I joined Nurdle Soup because the team’s mission is very much aligned with my passion for sustainability.
As the team captain of Nurdle Soup, I focus on coordinating the work by the different sub-teams. Beside that, I enjoy expanding our network and creating awareness among people about the problem we’re trying to tackle. I like working in this relatively small team as I’m surrounded by people who are motivated to work not because they have to, but rather because they want to as they care about our environment.”
“Hi, I am Frits, a 23-year-old mechanical engineer, soon to start on my master’s degree. I originally come from Heiloo, a village under Alkmaar. I joined Nurdle soup around the time it switched from a project group of a course to more an independent team.
At the time I was looking to join a student team to gain the experience of working on an exciting project without the boundaries of a course. The people, subject and the fact that the nurdle soup team was in its child’s shoes made me enthusiastic. Still, one year later, the team can be considered as young. This means it gives challenges of for instance how to promote, formulate goals for the future and structure the work. This is a trait of a young team, which I personally still find very useful for my personal development. It also means that sometimes you need to adapt to the work that is required. That is how I, a mechanical engineer that started working more on physical prototypes, ended up looking into object detection. As this is a whole new field for me, I am now looking and learning about the basics of neural networks to be able to set up the right object detection software.”
My story
Frits
Reijners
My story
Erik Vernooij
“Hey! I am Erik Vernooij. I joined the team in September together with Eileen and Frits. I have just started my masters Innovation Sciences at TU/e, where I focus on sustainable development.
I applied to join team Nurdle Soup right after the Responsible Innovation learning line. Here I was introduced to the challenge and I met the team members. The uniqueness and urgency of their challenge excited me and I applied to help develop the prototypes. Since I joined this has been my main contribution to the team. At the moment I supervise the technical team and I am also developing the first prototype to fit our camera system. Aside from this I am the treasurer, where I keep track of our alumni funds budget.
Joining the team has given me a lot of learning opportunities, and I have enjoyed it a lot. All of the members are super friendly and we have a good time, whilst creating a really cool product. I have since improved my prototyping skills and I have learned a lot whilst applying to become a foundation. I would say that this team sets itself apart from others by allowing every member to follow their own passion. Even though we have decided certain roles to every member, everyone is still free to explore different fields and tasks.”
“Hello! My name is Olivia and I am doing my PhD in Chemical Engineering. I’m responsible for the research team of Nurdle Soup. I joined because I think Nurdle Soup has great potential to make an impact.
We live in a society that takes little care of how materials are treated and takes the environment for granted. Therefore, it is necessary to have more initiatives like Nurdle Soup, which trigger a better use and management of our resources. I learned a lot from being part of the team. Much more passionately, I can now argue why we must do something about problems such as microplastics that threaten our natural environment.”
My story
Olivia Gonzales
My story
Nathan Pottier
“Hey, I’m Nathan, a third year ID student and the newest recruit in the Nurdle Soup team! Originally I come from France but I’ve got an international background. I discovered Nurdle Soup quite early as I was in the same USE Line as the founders. I got to see the development from step one to what it is now but only from an external view point. The project and the team always made me curious and I was eager to help out one day. This spring, the time felt right and joining in was a great decision!
Currently I work partly in the technical teams and partly in the promotion team of Nurdle Soup. This gives me a lot of freedom in what I can do in order to contribute! As the team is young, it’s every members responsibility to give it a direction and that is something I thoroughly enjoy! We all voice our opinions and our views on the team and together we make it happen. Also, one of my favourite traits of our team is that we are all in this with a common motivation around sustainability and the values around it.
As an ID student, a lot of the tasks I do are relevant and complement my bachelors. Being able to work on a project focused around sustainability as well brings a different angle to what projects can be about.
I hope you guys enjoyed the read and we hope to see some of you join our team in the close future!”
