Amsterdam, like many cities worldwide, aims to be a sustainable city. To achieve this ambition, we need to tackle the most pressing urban challenges. AMS Institute plays a crucial role in designing scalable solutions focusing on six urban domains: mobility, energy, circularity, food, climate, and digitization.
At our institute, we create synergies between our education, research & innovation, and entrepreneurship activities. Fostering collaborations between experts from various interdisciplinary backgrounds leads to cross-fertilization of innovative ideas. AMS Institute also builds an environment where connections are made between knowledge institutes, private and public organizations. With our mission-oriented collaborative approach, we generate societal impact. Jointly, we reinvent the city, and make Amsterdam resilient and just for current and future generations.
A strong, ever-growing community
Due to the continuing challenges brought by COVID-19, 2021 was a remarkable year. Like all parts of society, our institute too felt and experienced the restrictions related to the pandemic. In these new and dynamic times, like everyone, we found new ways of working, new ways to team up. We grew and strengthened the AMS community: MSc MADE students, researchers from TU Delft, WUR and MIT, AMS staff, our partners from the municipality and private parties.
Now more than ever we realize the importance of this community. It is the composition, cohesion, and diversity within and between all these parties that makes AMS Institute so unique.
“It is our community, combined with the fact that we can use the city of Amsterdam as our laboratory, that makes our approach so distinctive. Only with a strong and connected community, and only in the context of the city of Amsterdam, can we work together on the solutions needed to reinvent the city.”
Kenneth Heijns
Managing Director
“In 2021, we made great strides with our Research Fellows and Principal Investigators. Supported by WUR and TU Delft, our Research Fellow Community for instance developed into a group of 15 researchers from a wide range of disciplines to our community. By bringing together this pool of diverse expertise to find solutions to metropolitan issues, AMS Institute is a melting pot for new ideas and innovation.”
Eveline van Leeuwen
Scientific Director
Cumulative impact to reinvent the city
In this annual report, we showcase how the work of our students, researchers, entrepreneurs, and partners brings forward innovations that tackle the city’s most urgent challenges – such as creating a future-proof Amsterdam, tackling the City’s building challenge in a sustainable way, and accelerating the energy transition while considering the challenges involved in integrating new energy solutions in the city, both above and underground. By integrating our main activities, and through the combined knowledge and dedication of all the experts involved in our community, we work towards reinventing the city.
This year, the integration of AMS Institute’s educational, research & innovation and entrepreneurship activities was stronger than ever before. Many MSc MADE students collaborated on the institute’s research & innovation projects. Teams of students, alumni and researchers also participated in our entrepreneurship program to turn their innovative ideas into a business.
“This year we managed to further intertwine our education, research & innovation and entrepreneurship activities. The MADE students worked closely with our Research Fellows and Principal Investigators, staff and partners to tackle urban challenges in a cross-disciplinary and integral way; testing and experimenting with prototypes or proof-of-concepts in real-life environments in the city of Amsterdam and in our many living labs.”
Stephan van Dijk
Director of Innovation
This all adds up to our goal of reinventing cities worldwide. Amsterdam’s most pressing challenges are not unique and are precisely those that cities in the Netherlands and around the globe struggle with. Our goal is to develop solutions that work for Amsterdam and beyond.
The strong development of the institute in 2021 underlines the urgency and importance of AMS Institute’s mission to reinvent cities. We are proud to hereby share AMS Institute’s Annual Report 2021, and to tell you all about the many exciting highlights of the past year. This report provides a very vivid presentation of how we are active and connected in the heart of the city and its urban challenges. Let's show how the combined efforts of our mission-driven approach led to cumulative impact to reinvent the city >>
Our statement of account required by the Standards for Remunaration Act (in Dutch WNT), can be read here.