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Philosopher and ethicist Hanno Sauer and geophysicist Ylona van Dinther received the Early Career Award of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The prize is intended for researchers at the start of their career who are able to further develop innovative and original research ideas.

Hanno Sauer

As an innovative researcher, Sauer operates at the intersection of ethics and practical philosophy. His work is both fundamental and applied at the same time. Internationally recognised publishers such as Cambridge University Press, MIT Press and leading journals publish his books and articles on philosophy, ethics, moral psychology and meta-ethics. Hanno Sauer is University lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

The core of Hanno Sauer's research is how human reason fits into the natural world. Currently work in  empirical moral psychology poses a radical threat  to our self-image: if our moral values are ultimately grounded in emotions, and conscious reasoning merely provides superficially compelling rationalizations for our moral gut reactions, then we have no good reason for thinking that our moral norms enjoy any special authority. In his work, Sauer shows how to take the results of the empirical sciences of the moral mind seriously without succumbing to such pessimism. Reason, he argues, does have an influence on our moral beliefs, however fragile and unsteady it may be. More recently, he has worked on the question whether morality improves over time.  There are good grounds for cautious optimism, as it seems that the trajectory of social change is biased towards moral improvement. Sauer is currently directing an ERC-funded research team on the issue of moral progress, and is working on a popular book manuscript on the history of morality. An interview about his research recently appeared in the Dutch newspaper  and he gave a lecture at Studium Generale entitled ''.

Ylona van Dinter

Ylona van Dinther did groundbreaking research that opened a new research direction in geophysics. Her research combines the expertise of geodynamics and seismology to better understand why, where and when earthquakes and tsunamis will occur. With her lectures on the combination 'academic career and family', Van Dinther also acts as a role model for young researchers. Ylona van Dinther is Assistant Professor in seismotectonics and earthquake mechanics at the Department of Earth Sciences.

The new numerical models that she and her group at ETH Zurich developed and applied make it possible to understand both the slow tectonic processes in the earth's crust and abrupt earthquake processes and the relationship between them. The physical models also contribute to understanding and quantifying the risks of natural and induced earthquakes and tsunamis. In 2018 her research that pushed the community into this big challenges direction was awarded with the  from the Tectonophysics section of the American Geophysical Union.

Recently, she demonstrated the concept of applying weather forecasting techniques to estimate fault stresses and forecast earthquake recurrences. She received funding from NWO’s DeepNL to test this idea on laboratory experiments and better understand induced earthquakes in Groningen. That the quality and vision of her work are internationally much appreciated is apparent from an exceptional number of thirty invitations to speak at prominent international occasions and her role as Associate Editor at the highly respect Journal of Geophysical Research. She recently published an article on the influence of the thickness of sediment deposits on larger earthquakes.

Early Career Award

Twelve young researchers, three from each of KNAW's four Academy domains, will receive a KNAW Early Career Award. The prize, worth €15,000 and a work of art, is intended for researchers in the Netherlands who are at the beginning of their careers and have innovative, original research ideas. The KNAW Early Career Award will be awarded for the second time this year.