Three Vidi's for 3mE: Wouter Westerveld, Remco Hartkamp and Carlas Smith
Eight researchers from TU Delft, including three from the 3mE Faculty, namely Wouter Westerveld, Remco Hartkamp and Carlas Smith, received a Vidi grant for their research proposals.
W.J. (Wouter) Westerveld
Light to sense ultrasound in medical imaging
Wouter Westerveld, Precision and Microsystems Engineering
Medical imaging with ultrasound has recently seen great advances in hardware and algorithms. However, current high-end systems still detect ultrasound using piezo-electric sensors. The intrinsic noise of these sensors limits the quality and resolution of current medical images. Therefore, this research studies ultrasound sensing with light, which can have 100x better noise performance. The goal is to integrate hundreds of sensors in a photonic microchip and to interrogate them all simultaneously through a thin fibre-optic cable. This can open new applications in medical diagnostics and life science research. Such as the high-resolution brain imaging targeted in this project.
R.M. (Remco) Hartkamp
Remco Hartkamp, Process & Energy
Let’s put CO2 to a good use
Greenhouse gases can be converted to useful products via an electrical process called electrolysis. This technique has been around for some time, but its efficiency and stability are still insufficient for cost-effective implementation. This project aims to solve one of the technical questions currently standing in the way of large-scale implementation of electrolysis. Stability is mainly limited because the porous gas diffusion electrodes required for an efficient process fill with liquid during the process. In this project, a combination of simulation techniques is used, supported by experimental measurements, to find out how to modify the process and the porous electrodes so that the electrodes no longer fill with liquid. This research brings us a step closer towards enabling large-scale decomposition of mainly CO2 from the atmosphere, while also focusing on application for other electrical processes related to the energy transition.
Dr. C.S. (Carlas) Smith
Carlas Smith, Delft Center for Systems and Control
Fast and precise: a new microscope to visualize deep inside the cell
The mystery of life is hidden deep within the cell (less than one millionth meter) and happens at lightning speed (less than a tenth of a second). One microscope can reveal the smallest details, the other can take fast pictures, but so far there is no technique that does both and therefore can be used to study live tissues. To reveal what really happens in living tissue, scientists are building a microscope that combines different microscopy techniques and are developing an algorithm to cleverly combine the taken pictures. The algorithm will also indicate the reliability of the reconstruction.