Jerry de Groot was born in Haarlem, The Netherlands, on April 6th, 1979. His interest for research showed from his childhood hobby of “repairing” (opening up) broken toys and electronics, and giving a 45-minute school presentation on electricity as a 12-year old. After finishing high school with a 9.9 out of 10 grade for the national exam on physics, he was determined to study science. At the University of Twente, he chose applied physics, because he likes hands-on measurement work and making practical contributions to the world. He lived in Stockholm for over a year to work on his Master’s thesis on laser-Doppler perfusion imaging. Then, after a position as mechanical test engineer for railway systems and exploring bilingual physics teaching in high school, he returned to research in the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam for a successful PhD project on reducing pain and improving standardisation in mammographic breast compression. Jerry contributed to the valorisation of this innovation as research, development and data scientist for the spin-off company SigmaScreening delivering innovations for mammography. In July 2020, he joined Holland Innovative as Data Scientist, giving trainings and applying data techniques in reliability engineering.