When Ericsson left Enschede, Sonia Heemstra de Groot lost her research job. But not for long. Together with two colleagues she started up her own company with some of her own money. `You do have to take a chance occasionally.' It landed her the Marina van Damme Award, and prize for female entrepreneurship.
Sonia Heemstra de Groot grew up in Argentina as daughter of a Spanish mother and a Dutch father. After her study Electrical Engineering in Argentina she came to Eindhoven on a Philips scholarship in 1986. Heemstra de Groot (46) never returned to her home country. 'I went from one thing to the other more or less by accident', she says looking back. 'After my study in Eindhoven I could do my PhD in Twente. Immediately after that I was appointed lecturer and later senior lecturer at the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology.'
In 2001 she reduced her UT appointment from five days to one for a job at EricssonÆs Eurolab. 'I wanted industrial experience. Unfortunately, just when I had been working there for a year the division closed. A set-back. But I am a fighter and want to survive. Because it was such a pity for this region that all the expertise built-up would be lost I started a company together with two colleagues.'
The three partners attracted investors and invested some of their own capital. 'Not enormous amounts. I did not want take big risks because of my family. But I did want to invest in my own future.'
The Twente Institute for Wireless and Mobile Communications (WMC) was set up in April 2003 as technical R&D spin off of Ericsson Eurolab. At the Institutenweg sixteen people do research in the field of wireless communication. Including two female researchers. Far too few according to Chief Scientist Heemstra de Groot. The Marina van Damme prize is therefore more than welcome. Marina van Damme, the first woman to get her PhD at the UT, called the prize into being this year after she had found out that the Van den Kroonenberg prize for young entrepreneurship had never been given to a woman.
transl. DvA
