From 1 January 2024, Maurice van Veghel will be SPARC's new chairman of the board. Maurice has been involved with SPARC from the very beginning and has ambitious plans for SPARC's future. "In Ad Vissers' office back then was the first spark ✨ for SPARC. Alex Otten became the first chairman and I became secretary. When Alex stopped, Martin Hundepool took the chairmanship role, I remained secretary of the cooperation. Now that Martin is stopping, it seemed like the perfect time to put myself forward as the new chairman of SPARC."
Maurice currently works at Eviden (the digital arm of Atos). Before that, he was successively CIO of TU Delft and Sligro Food Group. So now he has an overview of both the demand and supply side of IT. At Eviden, Maurice is Transformation lead, responsible for developing the manufacturing proposition. He has also been chairman of the Advisory Board of HBO-i, the overall organisation of all higher vocational ICT courses in the Netherlands, for ten years. In that capacity, Maurice oversees how all hbo-ICT programmes are doing. "With their approach and the connection with SPARC, Fontys has a unique positioning. We want to keep it that way. There is an ambitious agenda ready for the coming years that we as a board and with the members of SPARC are going to take up with energy."
At the innovative Fontys ICT InnovationLab, Fontys ICT students, together with SPARC members including Jumbo, PSV, the Ministry of Defence and SUE, have been conducting practice-oriented research for five years. This bustling hub at Strijp-T, formerly the site of Philips Industrial Electronics and the birthplace of ASML, is the scene of continuous innovation. SPARC contributes to this by co-financing research and supporting start-ups in the Brainport region.
