The cleanroom is open!

With those words, our Executive Board President, Elisabeth Minnemann, summarized the essence of the Beethoven South Holland program. Today, together with the Mayor of Delft, Alexander Pechtold, she officially opened the cleanroom at our Delft campus. This new learning environment brings education, government, and industry together.

A cleanroom is an essential component in the production process of various industries. Our cleanroom is specifically designed for the semiconductor sector, an industry with a high demand for talent. By allowing students to work in a cleanroom during their studies, we create job‑ready professionals who can immediately add value in the workplace.

Industry-driven

Mayor Pechtold compared the collaboration to a symphony: “Just as a composer brings together separate elements to create a masterpiece, we bring together education, government, and industry to create a Delft showpiece. This educational cleanroom is a perfect example. The new cleanroom is available to all students from vocational education (mbo), universities of applied sciences (hbo), and research universities (wo) in South Holland, and to all employees in the semiconductor sector. This ensures that as many microchip technicians as possible can learn to work in a cleanroom.”

Throughout the program, the same key themes emerged: collaboration and innovation. Hans de Jong, the national envoy for the national microchip technology strengthening plan, explained why and how: “ASML’s growth was at risk of occurring outside the Netherlands, and that simply wasn’t an option. That’s why Beethoven is based on an industry‑driven approach, asking businesses what they need and when. This also meant asking our education sector to train for an entire industry. Something entirely new to a lot of people.”

Shared responsibility

Today, we opened more than just a facility. Elisabeth: “This is a shared learning environment, a joint investment, and above all a collective commitment to the future of technology and talent in our region. Through the Beethoven South Holland program, we are taking responsibility for talent development together. The challenges we face cannot be solved by a single institution. They require trust, alignment, and long‑term collaboration. And that is exactly what we have built together over the past year.”

Special thanks to Nellie van de Griend (The Hague University of Applied Sciences), Maarten Voncken (ASML), Hans de Jong, and Pieter Telleman (TU Delft) for their contributions.

More information 

Visit this page to learn more about the Beethoven South Holland program and what you can do in a cleanroom.