Archive

The Dutch economy must be fully circular by 2050 to help stop climate change. But our society actually uses more disposable plastic packaging and we use furniture and garments for shorter and shorter periods of time. This was stated by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency's biennial report on the circular economy showed last week. Within Europe, the Netherlands does lead the way when it comes to recycling, but we still do so largely "low-quality," according to the report. We turn plastic packaging into garden benches or roadside posts after recycling, for example, but not often enough our recycling leads to new plastic packaging.

TU Delft researchers Hayley Hung (EEMCS) and Kunal Masania (AE) have been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). These European grants are given to ambitious "groundbreaking research projects," with funding per grant of up to €2 million with a duration of five years.

The NWO honoured eight TU Delft research projects for Earth observation and planetary research. Several studies will start within the CEG faculty that will help us better understand the Earth's climate system.

Water, for drinking, sanitation, irrigation and clean energy, plays a crucial role in the transition to a more sustainable world. In the EPIC Africa project, assistant professor in Water & Control Edo Abraham explores how data collection, mathematical models and a closer cooperation between countries and sectors can improve water management and the planning of energy systems. The aim is to achieve an optimal and fairer utilisation of increasingly scarce water and land in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The ICAI Lab 'AI for Energy Grids' is one of 17 new ICAI labs recently launched as part of the NWO LTP ROBUST programme. The lab will research the application of AI to distribution networks. It will combine Alliander's considerable industrial capabilities with the academic strength of TU Delft, Twente University, Radboud University and the HAN University of Applied Sciences. The lab represents an excellent fit with TU Delft's ambitions to accelerate the energy transition.

Some cold ice shelves in Antarctica, which researchers initially thought would remain stable over the coming centuries, turn out to be vulnerable in the event of further global warming. This conclusion results from a study led by Utrecht University and on which Stef Lhermitte and Bert Wouters from Delft University of Technology contributed.

The jury of the Minerva Prize 2022 has selected Anne-Marije Zwerver (QuTech, TU Delft) as the winner from a list of impressive nominations. This prize is awarded to an outstanding young female or non-binary physicist in the Netherlands with an overall performance that scientifically excels in any subfield of physics.

Thursday, 19th of January 2023, TU Delft organised the Green Dragons' Den, based on the television programme, but focussed on sustainable innovations. During the Green Dragons' Den, companies were given the opportunity to pitch their idea to a jury.

It shows the shortest path even when 90% of the network is hidden.

The Netherlands needs to account for climate-driven flood risks when planning new housing advises the Deltaprogramma: where and how we build houses and what governments and homeowners can do to adapt to the increasing flood risks.

Today, the NWO announced that it is awarding the ROBUST programme 25 million euros. ROBUST, an initiative from the Innovation Centre for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI), is a collaboration of 51 partners from industry, government, and the knowledge sector, including TU Delft. ROBUST's total budget is over 87 million euros, and with the new impetus from NWO, 17 labs and 170 PhD students will be added in 10 years.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the need for prosthetic hands has increased sharply. TU Delft researcher Gerwin Smit has designed a prosthetic hand that can be made through a combination of 3-D printing and laser-cutting, which means that they be produced easily and relatively cheaply in countries that have little money to spend on such things. These prosthetic hands are already being used in India and now, the Indian technology company Vispala has donated 350 of Smit’s 3D-printed prosthetic hands to war victims in Ukraine, sponsored by the American IT-company, Cisco.

Many still know it as the old V&D building, later the Canadian department store Hudson's Bay moved in briefly, but the iconic building on the Grote Marktstraat in The Hague is getting an academic destination. Together with Leiden University, the Open University and Universities of the Netherlands (v/h VSNU), TU Delft will be co-occupying the Spui building in 2025. The ideal place to bring engineering knowledge closer to the heart of policy and administration, according to Behnam Taebi (Faculty of Technology ,Policy and Management TU Delft) and Jaco van Noppen (Campus Real Estate & Facility Management TU Delft).

This year Bieke Cattoor of the department Urbanism, section Landscape Architecture, is one of the new members of The Young Academy. The Young Academy is a dynamic and innovative group of scientists and scholars with outspoken views about science and scholarship and the related policy.

Nine consortia of researchers, companies, government bodies, and societal organisations have been awarded a total of almost 40 million euros to develop technological innovations targeting societal challenges. TU Delft is leader in three awarded consortia and participates in three other consortia, related to our societal themes Resilient Cities & Mobility, Health & Care and Climate & Energy.

IDE alumni-founded companies SenseGlove and Pieter Pot take 1st and 3rd place in the 2022 KVK Innovatie Top 100.

Aircraft emit nitrogen oxides and other emissions during both the LTO-phase (taxiing, take-off and landing) and when flying at high altitudes. These emissions return to the ground, resulting in nitrogen deposited over land and water bodies. Using an atmospheric model, researchers at TU Delft have quantified - for the first time - that in 2019 aviation was responsible for just under 1.2% of total global nitrogen deposition from all sources.

A smart alternative to the traditional sandbag and an experiment with clay to learn more about strengthening dikes. These are two examples of TU Delft research that is currently being exhibited as art at the Rijksmuseum.

The European Research Council has awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to Chiara Bisagni, Full Professor of Aerospace Structures and Computational Mechanics at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering TU Delft.

Everyone who works on the development of batteries in the Netherlands, small companies, multinationals and knowledge institutes, has joined together in the BatteryNL consortium to develop the next generation of batteries within eight years based on a better understanding of material interfaces. Prof. M. (Marnix) Wagemaker (TU Delft - Faculty of Applied Sciences) is the project leader of a €9.3 million project funded by NWO-ORC.

Without innovation ecosystems such as TU Delft Campus the Dutch economy would be smaller and less resilient, says the British research agency BiGGAR Economics.

TU Delft University of Technology, Gdańsk University of Technology and ETH Zurich join the ENHANCE Alliance on its journey towards a European University.

Physicists from the Gröblacher lab at TU Delft have built a device that can link different quantum devices and qubits to each other. This marks the first time that scientists are able to store as many qubits as they’d like within a very compact area on this type of chip.

Today, at the TU Delft Best Graduate Award Ceremony 2022, eight recently graduated engineers presented their research and results of their excellent master thesis. Ir. Saskia van Heumen, graduate of the Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (3mE), received the prestigious title TU Delft Best Graduate 2022. For her graduation research, Saskia developed a method to accurately image lymphatic vessels in patients.

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the ERC Starting Grants for young researchers. Four of them are scientists from TU Delft. This European grant of €1.5 million for a five-year programme is intended to enable individual scientists to build their own teams and conduct groundbreaking research.

TU Delft Resilience professor Tina Comes played a central role in advising the EU on how to improve its role in transboundary crises. Today she handed over the synthesis of the scientific evidence on crisis management to two European Commissioners and the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

On 21 November 2022, Delft University Fund signed a multi-year grant agreement with the Refreeze the Arctic Foundation. This will enable the development of innovative methods at TU Delft to modify clouds to combat global warming.

Researchers of Delft University of Technology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and VSL have developed an alternative positioning system that is more robust and accurate than GPS, especially in urban settings. The working prototype that demonstrated this new mobile network infrastructure achieved an accuracy of 10 centimeter.

In the Times Higer Education World Reputation Ranking 2022, published today, TU Delft is in position 43. Compared to other universities in Europe, TU Delft ranks 10th place, in the Netherlands 1st.

On 21 October 2022, a government grant worth €60 million was awarded for an ambitious proposal in the field of cellular agriculture, a young discipline that aims to produce animal products such as meat and proteins directly from animal cells and microorganisms. The financial support – the largest grant ever provided for cellular agriculture by a national government – is from the National Growth Fund.

Today, eight professors were simultaneously inaugurated as "Medical Delta professors" at Leiden University, LUMC, TU Delft, Erasmus University and/or Erasmus MC. With an appointment of two or more of these five academic institutions, they combine technology and healthcare in their professorships.

The test centre for drone and sensor applications Unmanned Valley will get access to a drone-corridor to sea, right over the dunes near Katwijk. This new flight path goes from former air force base Valkenburg (South-Holland) to the North Sea and has just opened.

In October, the number of students at TU Delft was 27,824, which was approximately the same as in October of the previous year (27,933). The number of students that registered at TU Delft for the first time (the influx) was 8,651, which represented a decrease of approximately 6% in comparison to the previous year. 

Since last week, a large-scale demo installation in Lampedusa is producing drinking water, salts and chemicals from seawater in an environmentally friendly way. Project leader Dimitris Xevgenos: “This is the first time that we’re producing these marketable products at pre-commercial scale in Europe together with the right actors, including the use of waste heat. People can come and actually see it running.” 

From October 31 until November 6 it is National Climate Week. As a climate university, TU Delft is committed to take part, because climate action is more urgent than ever. This week you will hear various NPO Radio 1 programmes live from the Climate Studio at The Green Village, the field lab for sustainable innovation on TU Delft Campus.

TU Delft is going to invest substantially in making its campus more sustainable. TU Delft is thus putting its previously published Sustainable TU Delft - vision, ambition & action plan into practice. Over the next few years, TU Delft will work towards a CO2-neutral, circular and climate-adaptive campus, with a focus on improving biodiversity and quality of life.

For the fourth time in a row, TU Delft ranks 21st in the Engineering & Technology rankings of the Times Higher Education Subject Rankings 2023 published today, 25 October. This is the most relevant category for a university of technology like TU Delft.