Hans van Eerden

Tech writer at Bits&Chips | Editor of Mikroniek | Van Eerden Tekst

Hans van Eerden is a Dutch technical journalist specializing in precision engineering, mechatronics and the high-tech supply chain. He writes for Bits&Chips and High-Tech Systems since 2022 and he is the longtime editor of Mikroniek, the professional magazine of the Dutch Society for Precision Engineering (DSPE). He also runs his own writing practice, Van Eerden Tekst.

He studied at the University of Twente and carries the academic title dr.ir., reflecting an engineering degree in applied physics combined with a doctorate in chemical physics. He is based in the eastern Netherlands, in the greater Enschede area, and works as an independent freelance writer rather than as in-house staff, a setup that has let him build relationships across the Dutch precision and mechatronics industry over three decades.

Van Eerden has more than 25 years of trade journalism behind him, covering manufacturing industry, machine and equipment building, smart industry and maintenance, precision technology, mechatronics, medical technology, laboratory technology, infrastructure and innovation policy. Over the years his byline has appeared in a range of Dutch industrial titles beyond his anchor roles, including Link Magazine, Constructeur, FMT Gezondheidszorg, OTAR, the Proces Media publications Solids Processing and Fluids Processing, and the magazine of the Dutch Vacuum Society, NEVAC. His longest-running post is at Mikroniek, where he has served as editor for just over two decades, working alongside an editorial board drawn from high-tech companies and the Dutch universities of technology and of applied sciences. Early in his career this work took him beyond the Netherlands, including trade missions to Japan and the US to report on medical technology and robotics research and future developments in these fields.

At Bits&Chips and High-Tech Systems, van Eerden focuses on the engineering and supply-chain side of the Dutch high-tech sector, with a recurring emphasis on ASML and the precision component makers and system suppliers around it. His features move past headlines into engineering detail: how ASML manages its extensive supplier base, how European consortia such as the Sioux Technologies-led IMOCO4.E project are advancing intelligent motion control and digital twins, and how classic Dutch design-engineering disciplines, such as precision leaf-spring design, are being modernized and automated. The throughline across his work is a practitioner’s interest in how precision machines actually get designed, sourced and built, not just what they achieve.

His dual grounding, an engineering and doctoral background paired with a journalist’s instinct for a story, is what lets him move fluently between boardroom strategy and shop-floor detail, producing the kind of technically literate reporting that resonates with the engineers who read it.

Hans van Eerden is editor of Mikroniek and a contributing writer at Bits&Chips.