JADS student wins Unilever Research Prize 2025

JADS student Orçun Karabıçak is one of the winners of the Unilever Research Prize 2025. The ceremony took place at Unilever’s Global Foods Innovation Centre Hive in Wageningen, where fourteen Master’s students from across the Netherlands were recognised for research that supports the Sustainable Development Goals.

Orçun presented his work during the event’s poster sessions, surrounded by projects ranging from clean energy and biodiversity to food security and AI in healthcare. Each winner received a €2,500 award and a unique artwork.

“I see myself very lucky that my path crossed with JADS,” says Orçun. “The academic environment encouraged curiosity, independence, and critical thinking, helping me approach complex real world problems with analytical depth and clarity. The unique setting of the Mariënburg campus fostered close connections within the cohort and easy access to faculty, which allowed a project from the Social Network Analysis in DS course to grow into both a peer reviewed article and my master’s thesis, later recognized by the Unilever Research Prize. The JMJ scholarship was decisive in making this possible. Without it I would not have been able to continue into the master program and fully focus on my academic work.”

This marks the second year in a row that a JADS student has received the prize. Last year, Cees Maessen was honoured for his work on AI-driven pear quality sorting. You can read that story here.

Unilever’s full article about this year’s winners can be found here.

We congratulate Orçun on this great achievement and are proud to see his work recognized at this level!