Rising star in the field of marine geology and tectonics wins the Vening Meinesz Prize

Anouk Beniest

Anouk Beniest of VU Amsterdam has won the Vening Meinesz Prize for the earth sciences. She will be awarded €10,000 towards her research in geology, geodynamics and geophysics and her activities to bring about more diversity, transparency and equality in the scientific world. The prize was awarded on 5 September 2022 during NAC 2022 (Nederlands Aardwetenschappelijk Congres).

Anouk Beniest is a university lecturer at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, researching into plate tectonics. She regularly goes to sea to carry out geophysical and geological research into the earth’s crust. Her special interest is in back-arc basins: geological basins on the ocean floor where one tectonic plate ‘subducts’ under another, and which are areas with a high risk of earthquakes and undersea ground shifts.

Anouk graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris in 2018 and was subsequently Alexander von Humboldt fellow in Kiel. She has devoted herself to acquiring skills in the three fundamental pillars of geoscience – geology, geodynamics and geophysics – and this the ideal starting point from which to lead multidisciplinary projects in the earth sciences. For many years Anouk has also worked to create an inclusive, accessible, and gender-equal academic environment at the university level, both nationally and internationally. She organized, for instance, an EGU debate on bullying in the academic world.

Assessment

Candidates for the Vening Meinesz Prize are assessed for their scientific research drive, independence, output, impact on the research community, creativity in research practice, and on the expectations for their future career. The selection committee was impressed by Anouk’s international career, describing her as ambitious, fearless, idealistic, and an innovative asset to the Dutch earth sciences because of her multidisciplinary working methods.

The Vening Meinesz Prize

The prize is named after Professor Felix Vening Meinesz (1887-1966), one of the founding fathers of the earth sciences in the Netherlands and of the NWO itself. His legacy provided for an NWO prize to be awarded to young talents in the Dutch earth sciences. NWO awards this prize every two years. Candidates can only be nominated if they graduated less than six years previously.