Dutch professor Thijs Kouwenhoven is the first foreigner to ever win a prize at the Peking University Young Teachers Competition. At the twelfth edition of this Young Teachers Competition, he won the second prize for Science and Engineering.
Thijs Kouwenhoven is a Bairen Research Professor from the Netherlands at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University (KIAA-PKU). Each spring semester, Thijs Kouwenhoven teaches the course “Modern Astronomy” to almost two hundred students undergraduate students of all majors at Peking University. The course is entirely taught in the English language.
Both Thijs Kouwenhoven and Richard de Grijs, professor and associate director of the KIAA, have given excellent lectures to the Sino-Dutch researcher network earlier this year where they displayed their talent for (interactive) teaching to an audience of Chinese scientists.
The Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University (KIAA-PKU) carries out research on the origin and evolution of astrophysical structures from the scales of planetary systems and stars up to that of the Universe as a whole. The Institute is designed to be a forum for global scientific exchange, an incubator for innovative projects, and a training center for international postdocs and students. The working language of the KIAA-PKU is English.