Meet Our Team

Our team consists of some of the brightest product developers, data scientists and of course natural grass experts.

Holland Innovative, our mother company, has more than 20 years of experience supporting tech companies bringing new products to the market, focusing on complex business processes. Such as the sports pitch of the Johan Cruijff ArenA.

Based on 7 years of collecting data about the pitch, the team knows the power of data and what progress it can bring. Now the moment is there for our solutions and tools to see the rest of the world in the shape of products we have developed by our own. The HiPSter (Hi Pitch Screener) and the accompanying dashboard delivered to you via Hi Sports.

Still driven by open collaboration/innovation, high quality, and having fun.

Hans is the leading visionair driving HI-Sports and sustainable pitch management forward. Good for players, the game and the planet, while reducing costs. Hans is a great believer of bringing open innovation into practice with projects that really matter. The word "cannot" is not in his dictionary, in other words: How are we going to solve this together?

Joep graduated in Applied Biology and has specialized in Biological Crop Protection and knowledge of secondary metabolites. Joep has been working at the Johan Cruijf ArenA for the past 7 years on optimizing their natural grass pitch. He can actually bring the grass to sleep before a concert that’s why we call him the “grass whisperer”.

‘Sport has the power to unite people’ (Nelson Mandela). And our society needs to be united more than ever. This is why creating the perfect pitch to play the perfect match will make a difference to all of us. Our technology helps make this possible in a sustainable way; on natural grass pitch instead of artificial turf. That is why I am proud to be part of this team!

Nol is Blackbelt Reliability Engineer with an extensive track record in the High Tech Industry. Nol is responsible for testing the reliability of the HiPSter design and improving the system. Nol has tested the HiPSter extensively and has shown the HiPSter to reach the same level of accuracy and repeatability predetermined by FIFA measurement standards.

What if Artificial intelligence (Ai) can help to grow the perfect pitch? This is what Simone is working on based on 7 years of data gathered at the Johan Cruijff ArenA. Simone likes to dive into data to find the cause of problems and work in a team to find and implement a solution.

Timo is a full-stack software architect with a passion to produce solutions that make a difference. Delivering the perfect pitch provides a fascinating puzzle which aims to strike the right balance between biology, software and human interaction.

With a background in physics, Maaike knows how to analyze data from a multispectral camera. With her knowledge, the added value of a new setup to determine the quality of the pitch in the Johan Cruijff ArenA is investigated. Because the perfect pitch, that’s the goal!

Tessa has just graduated in Data Science & AI and is keen to apply all the learned material onto real life cases, like the HiPSter. With the use of data analysis she works on improving the quality of the HiPSter.

Zilvinas is a perseverant and driven second-year computer science and engineering student, whose passion lies in using technology to solve real-world problems. With a unique blend of skills in UI design, front-end development, and a personal interest in sports, Zilvinas is dedicated to creating an intuitive, user-friendly, and reliable dashboard that can be easily accessed by anyone.

Finishing up his study of Applied Geo-information Science, Thijs is using his experience to help implementing geospatial data within our system. On top of that he's also redesigning certain UI elements with the user experience of our clients as the highest priority.

How can a data driven solution be applied to the field management domain? Pietro, a fresh graduated young professional and AI expert, focuses on augmenting decision making through empirical results. In the end it always comes down to the choice of the right algorithm.

Gijs is doing his internship Mechanical Engineering at HI Sports. He is eager on making as big of an impact on the mechanical development of the HiPSter as possible.