NAE Forum at cosine

On Tuesday, 10 February 2026, cosine hosted the Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE) Forum at its headquarters, bringing together NAE Fellows and partners to address critical challenges in Dutch engineering. The event featured special guests NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps and Dr. Omar Hatamleh, NASA’s former lead for Artificial Intelligence, who joined to share their expertise and experiences.

Technical education in the Netherlands
As a founding partner of the NAE Partner Council, and with founder Prof. Dr. Marco Beijersbergen serving as an NAE Fellow, cosine welcomed the opportunity to host the Forum and support its mission to strengthen the Dutch engineering ecosystem. The forum focused on technical education in the Netherlands, exploring how higher and vocational education can work together to increase access to technological fields and the role the NAE can play in enabling this.

One of the highlights of the afternoon was the presence of two distinguished international guests from NASA:

• Jeanette Epps, a veteran NASA astronaut with extensive experience in orbital missions, who gave a presentation on her time in space.
• Dr. Omar Hatamleh: Former Chief Advisor for AI at NASA (through January 2026) and a leading voice on digital transformation. He shared insights into global trends in Artificial Intelligence.

“It was an honor to host the NAE Forum, welcome such special guests from NASA, and have the opportunity to highlight the global impact of the work being done here by cosine in Sassenheim,” said Lars Flinkerbusch, Director of Operations at cosine.

Following the Forum’s program, the NASA delegation and NAE members toured cosine’s extensive high-tech facilities. These facilities span over 1,000 m² of state-of-the-art cleanrooms, where cosine develops its cutting-edge measurement systems and instruments.

About the NAE
The Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE) unites top experts from across the engineering spectrum to promote innovation and address societal challenges through technological excellence.

About cosine
cosine is a leading worldwide company in the development of space instrumentation, such as Silicon Pore Optics for astronomy and remote sensing solutions with onboard analytics for Earth Observation and planetary science. cosine combines physics and technology to bring out-of-the-box solutions to its clients. cosine has been developing and delivering innovative measurement systems for space and industrial applications since 1998. The company operates more than 1,000 m2 of cleanrooms and high-tech assembly facilities to build and test the systems we produce for customers at our headquarters in Sassenheim, The Netherlands and at subsidiaries in Berlin, Germany and Benevento, Italy.