During the plenary opening of ICT.OPEN on April 15, 2026, both Inald Lagendijk and Lynda Hardman received the IPN Service Award 2026. The Award recognizes a person who has provided outstanding service to the IPN community.
Winners Inald Lagendijk and Lynda Hardman
Lynda Hardman
Lynda Hardman, Principal Research and Strategist at CWI and Professor of Multimedia Discourse Interaction at Utrecht University, has been a transformative force for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within IPN, championing women in science both nationally and across Europe. She recognised a dual imperative: that women’s underrepresentation in Computer Science means their values and perspectives are systematically excluded from the technologies shaping our society, while simultaneously understanding that attracting and retaining female talent would strengthen IPN’s position as a research community, expand its impact, and help it grow.
To address this issue, Lynda helped establish gender representation requirements in IPN’s founding statutes and went on to found the IPN EDI working group, which has become central to improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in the Dutch ICT community. She personally coordinated with every IPN department head to ensure each institution appointed an EDI representative. In addition to this, Lynda co-authored the booklet ‘Why would I want to do a PhD in Computer Science?’ that continues to inspire female master students to pursue a PhD.
Amplifying the Dutch voice
As an ambassador for IPN within Informatics Europe, Lynda amplified the Dutch computing community’s voice on the European stage, serving as President of IE from 2016-2017 and ensuring that all Dutch computer science departments gained membership. There too, she championed women in science by founding the WIRE working group and authoring ‘More Women in Informatics Research & Education’. 5,000 booklets were distributed to over 200 computer science departments across Europe, providing practical guidance on attracting and retaining female talent.
Lynda’s extraordinary tenacity and more than a decade of sustained commitment to EDI have set in motion a transformation that will endure for generations: the young women she has inspired to enter informatics will themselves become role models, who in turn diversify and strengthen the Dutch ICT landscape. This enduring legacy of structural change that helps IPN grow and represent the full breath of society it serves makes her an exemplary recipient of the IPN Service Award.
Inald Lagendijk
Inald Lagendijk, Distinguished Professor in Computing-based Society at TU Delft, has been a crucial person in shaping the National Computer Science Research landscape as we know it now. With his over 30 years of experience in leading national and international fundamental and public-private research projects, over the course of multiple decades, Inald has fulfilled a vast variety of managerial positions. Among many others, he was a board member of the NWO Domain Science , founder and coordinator of the national top sector program Commit2Data, and founding board member of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering.
He took part in councils and governance boards on all levels. To name a few: he was a member of the advisory council of the Netherlands ICT Research and Innovation Authority (ICTRegie), acted as the scientific director of the 4TU federation’s Netherlands Institute on ICT (4TU.Nirict), was a member of the management team of the ASCI Research School, acted as the figurehead of the route ‘Creating value through responsible access to and use of big data’ of the Dutch National Research Agenda, and is a member of the steering committee of PRIO, the platform that represents ICT research at applied universities.
Setting agendas
Inald chaired the team of 40 Dutch AI scientists who composed the Dutch AI research agenda AIREA-NL. As such, he stood at the cradle of large-scale AI-oriented initiatives like the Netherlands AI Coalition and the Growth fund programme AiNed, which merged into the AI Coalition for the Netherlands (AIC4NL).
Perhaps his most visible role so far has been that of the captain of science of the national innovation top team on ICT (Digital Holland), a role that he has fulfilled from the start of the top sector in May 2015 until December 2024.
In all of these positions, Inald has always been working hard to ensure budgets for Computer Science research, often being directly in charge of writing calls for proposals. Likewise, he is has been on many assessment committees, often as chair, following a constructive critical approach that invariably leads to improved quality. All in all, Inald’s influence on ICT research in the Netherlands has been nothing less than remarkable. Therefore: if there is anyone who deserves to receive this IPN award, it is Inald Lagendijk.
About the IPN Service Award
The first IPN service award was handed out in 2025 and recognises a person who has provided outstanding service to the IPN community.