Drs. Henk Vrins on the Olaf Schuiling Fund

The initiative for the founding of the Olaf Schuiling Fund comes from Drs Henk Vrins. He studied Chemistry at Utrecht University in the 1960s, after which he made a career for himself at Koninklijke Hoogovens (later Corus, currently Tata Steel). Six questions about his student years at Utrecht University and his motivation to found this fund decades later.

The Olaf Schuiling Fund supports research in the field of geochemistry. Why did you choose this specific specialisation?

Back then, and still today I hope, Utrecht University offered a big diversity in classes in chemistry specialisations, including mineralogy. I gratefully utilised that for my candidate exam. My Major for the Master’s exam became theoretical chemistry, but I also consciously counterbalanced that with a down-to-Earth Minor subject such as geochemistry. That is one of the reasons why a few years later, when I was working on theoretic doctoral research, I could not resist a job offer from Hoogovens to work on an exploration project in the Tropics. Geochemistry may have been my Minor subject, it turned out to be career-defining for me.

And Olaf Schuiling as well?

Yes, indeed. He aroused my interest in geochemistry and taught me to take my first steps in that then new field of study. I stayed in contact with Olaf after my student years as well, among other things about his current research and publications. 

Back then, you halted your doctoral research. Have you ever considered finishing it one day?

The intention was that my work at Hoogovens would be temporary, and that I would return to the university to have my PhD Defence about three years later. That ultimately never happened. That did give me the feeling I had something to make up for with science. To me, setting up a Named Fund that financially supports current research is the ideal way to actually do that.

When you set up the fund, you chose to only support fundamental research. Why specifically fundamental research and not applied research as well?

First of all, I think applied research does not belong as much at a scientific university such as Utrecht. In the Netherlands, we have technical universities for that. On top of that, applied research attracts funding more easily because it usually appeals more to potential sponsors by itself. Even the Dutch government is more likely to primarily advance research that aims to solve ‘social issues’. However, a scientific university primarily aims to develop knowledge and insight by means of fundamental research, whatever the result may be.

A scientific university primarily aims to develop knowledge and insight by means of fundamental research, whatever the result may be.

What is the additional money the fund offers needed for?

By now, Utrecht has developed a strong and also internationally renowned Geochemistry Department, with far more students than there were in my days. This also means that the stream of research proposals is often bigger than the regular budget can provide for, which means even qualitatively excellent projects can miss out. These can be, for instance, research projects that require very advanced, but also very expensive analysis equipment that is sometimes not available in Utrecht. Students can submit a request to the fund for a contribution in the costs to use that equipment, which improves the quality of their research.

What is your current role in this fund?

As a member of the allocation committee, I mostly look whether or not a proposal meets the goal of the fund. So far, I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality and scientific relevance of the projects the current generation of Geochemistry students are working on. I would like to invite all other alumni of the field of study to also contribute to the Olaf Schuiling Fund – there is no lack of research projects worth funding.