Name: Alexander Jan Brink
Born: 's-Hertogenbosch (The Netherlands), 12 October 1969
Education
Business Administration (MSc BA), Erasmus University Rotterdam
Career
In 1994 Alexander Brink started as an independent management consultant. From 1996 he fulfilled that role within Coopers & Lybrand (later PwC Consulting). In 2003, Alexander moved to IBM, where he initially held various management positions in strategic outsourcing, finance and global accounts.
From 2010 to 2018 he was Head of Science Alliances for IBM Research, responsible for the Benelux. From that position, Alexander was in charge of a portfolio of large public-private science alliances in which IBM Research co-operates with scientific organizations and partners from government and industry. In this position he was involved in various ground-breaking projects. He was, for example, chairman of the steering committee and co-ordinator of the six-year collaboration called the DOME Project and of the ASTRON & IBM Center for Exascale Technology. He also wore statutory overall responsibility on behalf of IBM for a series of other major scientific collaborations.
In 2019, Alexander Brink started ASCONA, through which he uses his valuable knowledge and experience and his unique network to create fruitful collaborations between fundamental science, business and society. In this purely independent role, he has been involved, among other things, in the creation of FAIR-DI, a Dutch-German legal entity based in Berlin.
FAIR-DI is a collaboration between a series of institutes among which the Max Planck Gesellschaft, the Helmholtz Gemeinschaft, various German top universities, such as Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, TU München and the Leibniz Institute for Chrystal Growth. On the Dutch end are the Radboud University, University of Twente and NWO Institutes / ASTRON. FAIR-DI is about opening up large scientific data repositories by using artificial intelligence and categorisation based on aspects like cyber security and law & governance. Moreover, it is about societal valorisation of scientific data.
Currently, Alexander also advises various scientific institutions and associations on positioning and financing. Among his clients are the top scientific facility HFML-FELIX, with its super magnets and free-electron laser laboratories, and also NOVA, the Dutch Research School for Astronomy.
Extracurricular administrative and supervisory positions
Alexander Brink has been on the NWO Large Committee (investing in large scientific infrastructures) twice since 2015. He has also served on the board and then on the Supervisory Board of Het Groene Brein (The Green Brain), the scientific approach to circular industry, with mainly scientists as its members. In addition, Alexander has spent many years as a member of boards and committees responsible for fundraising, for example. On behalf of IBM, he sponsored a series of baroque concerts in the Royal Concertgebouw. In 2012, Alexander was a member of the jury for the National oeuvre prize for classical music reviewers of the Pierre Bayle Foundation.
Private life
Alexander Brink is an amateur pianist and singer with a deep-rooted preference for classical music. He has been a sea sailor for many years. Alexander lives in Santpoort-Zuid, The Netherlands and has two children.
