The new campus aims to create a breeding ground for new business, innovation and talent development in the field of smart services by facilitating the interaction between education, research and entrepreneurship. Smart services are ingenious product and service innovations based on data connected through ICT. Smart data combinations should create more insight into clients’ needs, enhance operational efficiency and improve services. The Smart Service Campus in Heerlen is part of Brightlands, the overarching name for the Limburg campuses that include the Chemelot Campus in Sittard-Geleen and the Maastricht Health Campus.

Last year, the Province of Limburg, pension provider APG and Maastricht University agreed to launch a new campus that would focus on smart services like these and become a breeding ground for new business, innovation and talent. The campus would also include a top-tier institute known as the Business Intelligence & Smart Services (BISS) Expertise and Innovation Centre where research, education and business converge. Here, Maastricht University, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences and the Open University of the Netherlands work together with the aim of developing four new study programmes.

Verkoulen has extensive experience with strategic growth projects situated at the cutting edge of IT and business. Until recently he was the senior vice-president of ICT service provider Atos, responsible for managing large-scale strategic sourcing and outsourcing projects in the Benelux and Scandinavia. He also further developed activities in the energy and public sectors on behalf of Atos. Verkoulen has also worked for KPGM/EquaTerra and the Transport Research Centre (AVV) of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management and as a professor at the University of Twente and the Eindhoven University of Technology. He obtained a PhD in Computer Science/Information Systems Design from the Eindhoven University of Technology in 1993.