Wijermars, working at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), studies information control in authoritarian states such as Russia, with a specific focus on digital platforms. Among other things, she focuses on the role of algorithms and the terms of use these platforms in political processes.
The second Maastricht prize winner, Christian Herff, is researching 'speech prostheses' at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML): an innovation that could enable people who can no longer speak due to brain damage to produce sound by imagining they are talking. In doing so, he is working on developing algorithms that convert brain signals into audio.
Prize winners elsewhere in the country study, amongst others, immune responses to infections, atmospheric loss in exoplanets, literature education in the Netherlands and the impact of crises on human well-being. The winners may spend the amount of 15 thousand euros on their research career as they see fit.