A Dutch University Startup Just Made Ultrasound Training a Year Shorter — and Won €5,000 Doing It
Eindhoven, Saturday, 6 June 2026.
Polaris, a real-time guidance tool that cuts ultrasound operator training from one year to a fraction of that time, has won the inaugural TU/e Tech Transfer Challenge, held at ASML’s Eindhoven campus on June 4, 2026.
The Technology Behind the Win
Polaris is not a conventional medical device — it is a sensing unit mounted directly onto an ultrasound probe, engineered to deliver real-time feedback to operators during carotid ultrasound examinations [1]. The technology specifically targets a critical diagnostic bottleneck: the assessment of patients who have suffered a Transient Ischemic Attack, commonly known as a TIA or mini-stroke, where rapid and accurate imaging of the neck’s blood vessels is essential [1][2]. The problem Polaris addresses is stubbornly practical — learning to correctly position an ultrasound probe to obtain a diagnostically valid image of the carotid artery currently demands approximately one year of dedicated training [2]. Polaris, developed by TU/e PhD candidate Noortje Schueler and her co-founder Hans van Gorp, essentially compresses that learning curve by guiding the operator’s hand in real time, making advanced diagnostics significantly more accessible to a broader range of healthcare professionals [1][2].
From 24 Submissions to a €5,000 Prize
The road to winning the inaugural Tech Transfer Challenge (TTC) began modestly: twenty-four submissions, each no longer than 100 words, submitted by TU/e PhD candidates, postdocs, and researchers earlier in 2026 [2]. What followed was months of pitching, refining, and mentoring — a structured gauntlet designed not to manufacture entrepreneurs by force, but to give researchers the informed opportunity to discover whether their laboratory work could serve as the foundation for a commercial company [2]. The TTC was initiated in March 2026 by Boudewijn Docter and Tienko Rasker, operating with the backing of TU/e’s Knowledge Transfer Office (KTO), ASML, Brainport Eindhoven, the Gerard & Anton Foundation, Braventure, DeepTechXL, the University Fund Eindhoven, Leapfunder, and IO+ [1][2]. On June 4, 2026, at the grand finale held at ASML’s campus in Eindhoven, Polaris was announced as the winner, with Schueler and Van Gorp taking home the €5,000 first prize [1][2].
Five Finalists, One Stage, Six Deep-Tech Futures
Polaris did not win unopposed. Five other finalist teams pitched their innovations at the ASML venue on the same day [1]. Gelion Care presented a nitric oxide hydrogel targeting diabetic ulcers — a condition with enormous global prevalence [1]. PFAS Free brought a plasma reactor concept aimed at treating contaminated wastewater, addressing one of Europe’s most pressing environmental regulatory challenges [1]. RAPID pitched real-time software solutions for 5G and 6G networks, while ORIONN offered a combined hardware and software approach to industrial optimization [1]. Rounding out the field was ARIES, a bioreactor concept designed for ligament tissue engineering [1]. The breadth of disciplines represented — from medical devices and environmental technology to next-generation telecommunications and advanced manufacturing — illustrated precisely the kind of deep-tech pipeline that the Brainport Eindhoven ecosystem has been cultivating [1][GPT]. As Boudewijn Docter, one of the TTC’s organizers, put it: ‘in the university labs, there is a lot of untapped potential, often invisible to the outside world’ [1].
ASML, Brainport, and the Institutional Logic of Tech Transfer
The choice of ASML’s campus in Eindhoven as the finale venue was far from incidental. ASML, the world’s dominant supplier of photolithography equipment used in semiconductor manufacturing [GPT], has long been the anchor institution of the Brainport Eindhoven high-tech corridor. Evelien de Vries, partnership manager for startups and venture capital at ASML, articulated the company’s stake in the broader innovation ecosystem clearly: ‘Innovation is what we build; we do it internally, but we also want to make sure that around us, there is a lot of innovation happening’ [1]. Renato Calzone, head of TU/e’s Knowledge Transfer Office and a jury member at the TTC, echoed that collaborative logic: ‘As KTO, we want to be a collaborative organization, not only towards the university but also to the outside world. Initiatives like this help push impactful innovation out of the labs’ [1]. Calzone had also appeared just days earlier, on May 26, 2026, at the separate TU/e Contest 2026 Finalist Selection Event — where he handed out the Impact Award with the observation that ‘in isolation you create nothing’ [3]. That parallel event, held at TU/e and featuring ten student-led finalists across a different set of categories, is scheduled to culminate in its own Grand Prize announcement on June 11, 2026 [3]. Together, the TTC and the TU/e Contest signal an institution actively broadening its commercialization infrastructure on multiple fronts simultaneously.
What Comes Next: Annual Ambition and a Broader Vision
For Noortje Schueler, the competition represented more than a prize. ‘Taking part in the TTC has been a moment of growth for us,’ she said — a sentiment that captures the competition’s design intent as much as any outcome metric [1]. The TTC was never conceived as a one-time event. Organizers have confirmed that the challenge is scheduled to return in 2027, with an explicit ambition to expand the model beyond Eindhoven: the goal, as stated by the TU/e LinkedIn announcement, is to run the Tech Transfer Challenge annually at every technical university that wants to see more spin-offs [1][2]. That ambition reflects a wider European trend in which technical universities are increasingly treating knowledge transfer not as a peripheral administrative function, but as a core institutional mission [GPT]. For the Brainport region, where the density of high-tech manufacturing, semiconductor expertise, and academic research is among the highest in Europe [GPT], the TTC’s first edition offers a credible proof of concept — and Polaris, with its real-world clinical application and clear commercial pathway, is now the benchmark against which future cohorts will be measured [1][2].