New funding, new directors, new participating faculty, new themes: TU Delft Safety & Security Institute continues its work

The mandate of TU Delft Safety & Security Institute has been renewed for another 5-year period to continue its work with and for the safety & security research community at TU Delft. For this next chapter of the institute, Behnam Taebi will hand over the directorship to Eleonora Papadimitriou and Justin Dauwels. Together they will take the lead as co-directors. With Mechanical Engineering joining, the institute now represents the safety & security communities of six faculties.

“Transdisciplinary safety & security: connecting TU Delft researchers and domains towards a strong societal positioning” is the strategy for the coming period. Building on its achievements in the past 10 years, the institute will continue its efforts regarding inclusive community building while also taking on ambitious new challenges.

Continuation and change

‘Safety & security in a changing world’ was the theme of the anniversary magazine of the Institute, which was published at the end of 2023. Safety & Security aspects of climate change, new digital technologies, and the rapid changing geopolitical tensions all increase the need for inclusive, comprehensive, and thoughtful multidisciplinary engineering approaches.

Considering such developments, and after a process of community and stakeholder consultation, the Safety & Security (S&S) Institute has picked four overarching joint research themes as its focus for the next five years:

Safe & Sustainable by Design,
Forensics & Failure Analysis,
Digital vulnerabilities,
Security & Geopolitics

The first two themes are a continuation of the themes that successfully guided the work of institute over the past five years, the last two are new. Work undertaken under these themes includes expanding Safe by Design to more domains, novel work on the safety and security of transitions in transport, and programming on national security. The institute will continue to develop new initiatives under the recently signed framework agreement with the Dutch police to work on safety & security issues, which already led to the establishment of a joint Model-Driven Decisions Lab (MoDDL).

Old and new faces

The new funding period for the institute also involves a change in management. Behnam Taebi will step down as scientific director of the institute. In an article in the institute’s recent anniversary magazine, he reflected on the history and future of the field with Pieter van Gelder, who was scientific director during the first 5-year funding period.

In the coming five years the institute will have two scientific leads, namely Eleonora Papadimitriou (Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management) and Justin Douwels (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science). The research of the former has a focus on safety, the research of the latter on security. Together they will deliver the synergy that the institute aims to create between both domains. In an interview on the website of the institute they introduce themselves.

In the coming period the co-directors will start shaping the new management team, involving all the participating faculties. Eveline Vreede continues her activities for the institute.