Archive

"We are concerned about the impact of ship emissions on our climate. But we should also start worrying about the effect of climate change on shipping." This statement was made by professor Mark van Koningsveld in his inaugural speech. Held at TU Delft on Friday 10 June during the Port & Waterways symposium.

In the 2018 Nature article Quantized Majorana conductance, the first author involved, Dr Hao Zhang, and corresponding author, Professor Leo Kouwenhoven, were partly negligent and partly culpably negligent. There was no violation of scientific integrity. This is the judgement of the Executive Board of TU Delft, based on recommendations of the TU Delft Research Integrity Committee (CWI), supported by external experts, and advice of the Netherlands Board on Research Integrity (LOWI).

From Monday 30 May, TU Delft teachers and students can start using sustainable education building Echo. After the summer break, the building will be in full use and the catering facilities will be fully operational. This energy-producing building on TU Delft Campus is set to contribute to TU Delft’s ambition of operating in a completely sustainable manner and becoming a carbon-neutral and circular campus by 2030.

Researchers in Delft have succeeded in teleporting quantum information across a rudimentary network. This first of its kind is an important step towards a future quantum Internet. The researchers, working at QuTech—a collaboration between Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO)—are publishing their findings today in the scientific journal Nature.

TU Delft, Royal Brinkman and start-up Mapture have developed the next step in drone technology for agriculture. Their new AI-enabled drone takes off completely independently, flies over rows of plants and people in a greenhouse, takes high-resolution photos, and lands safely back on its charging station.

Maintaining aircraft fleets smarter and more efficiently using AI? With a major study of several European universities and industries (ReMAP) with TU Delft as project leader, a step has been taken in the modernization of aircraft maintenance using Artificial Intelligence.

Delft will temporarily accommodate 200 asylum seekers. The emergency shelter is for the duration of 5 months. TU Delft will make space available on its premises on the southern part of the TU Delft Campus.

The increased digitalisation of the power grid comes with its own set of cyber threats and risks. In TU Delft’s Control Room of the Future (CRoF) the power grid gets put through its paces. This remarkable research facility offers both industry and academics unique opportunities to research, develop and test the integration of new energy management technologies into the smart grid.

Our society is digitising itself more and more. That offers opportunities, such as more efficient working, but it also raises many ethical questions – the sort of questions now being addressed by TU Delft’s new Digital Ethics Centre. Together with government agencies and companies, the centre’s researchers are looking at the ethical side of AI and digitalisation, such as fairness, safety and transparency, and seeking to develop the best solutions and applications.

The KNAW has selected 22 new members, two of whom are from TU Delft. The KNAW members, leading scientists from all disciplines, are chosen based on their scientific achievements.

Kornelis Blok (TBM), Jaap Harlaar (3mE), Paulien Herder (TNW), Catholijn Jonker (EWI) and Rob Mudde (CVB) received a Royal Decoration this year for their major contributions to education, science and society.

Associate Professor Mazhar Ali and his research group at TU Delft have discovered one-way superconductivity without magnetic fields, something that was thought to be impossible ever since its discovery in 1911 – up till now.

The European Research Council has awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to two TU Delft researchers: Sjoerd Stallinga (ImPhys) and Frank Hollmann (Biotechnology). The European grant enables internationally established research leaders to conduct a five-year research project.

In order to become climate neutral by 2050, the share of renewable energy generated at sea will need to increase significantly. Floating wind turbines, solar panels and tidal power plants will play a crucial role in this.

If it is up to the European Commission, all the energy used will come from renewable sources by 2050. Achieving this goal will require the large-scale use of floating wind turbines, says Axelle Viré, wind expert at TU Delft. ‘Although the technology is still in its infancy, it has enormous potential,’ she explains. ‘To capitalise on this potential, TU Delft is launching the Floating Renewables Lab: a lab facility that will tie together all the elements of the development chain for floating wind turbines and other offshore renewables with the help of numerical models and AI.’

A of researchers from TU Delft , led by dr. Farbod Alijani, have managed to capture low-level noise of a single bacterium using graphene. Now, their research is published in Nature Nanotechnology.

Ridding the oceans of plastic waste is a huge undertaking which would be significantly helped if the location of the plastic waste could be ascertained with some accuracy. Wave expert Ton van den Bremer is using waves and satellites to track down the ‘phantom’ plastic that is polluting our oceans.

The canals and quaysides in historic cities such as Amsterdam, Delft and Utrecht make a pretty picture. In order for these often busy cities to remain safe, the quay walls, some over 300 years old and built on wooden piles, need to be well maintained.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Royal Schiphol Group, Airbus, Royal NLR and TU Delft are entering into a close co-operation to develop the technology needed for climate-neutral flights in 2050.

Another 78 promising young scientists receive Veni funding of up to 280,000 euros from NWO. This concerns sixty researchers from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SGW) domain and eighteen from the Applied and Technical Sciences (TTW) domain, who can further develop their own research ideas over the next three years. The Venis for the ENW and ZonMW domains were announced in December 2021.

Oil and gas shortages are not only pushing up the prices of gas and petrol, but also plastics, medicines and cosmetics. To make our society less dependent on fossil fuels and combat climate change, the chemical industry needs to change radically. In recent years, TU Delft and TNO have laid the foundation for cleaner production processes in the chemical industry. The new e-Chem partnership is now taking this a step further by actually constructing a clean factory of the future.

TU Delft is ranked 10th for Engineering & Technology in the QS World University Rankings by Subject published on 6 April 2022. TU Delft also made the top 20 in ten of its categories.

The goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change, limiting global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C, is becoming increasingly unrealistic unless countries collectively decide to take action immediately. This is the opinion of the five Dutch climate experts who contributed to the IPCC report that appeared today. Such an acceleration and strengthening of policy measures is still possible, but requires a far-reaching transformation of the systems that underpin our economy, including energy, industry, transport, and agriculture. The coming years will be crucial in this respect. These are some of the most important conclusions from the IPCC report published today.

Engineers from Intel and scientists from QuTech have delivered the first qubit made in the very same industrial manufacturing facilities that mass-produce conventional computer chips.

Quantum Application Lab now open to explore the advantages and business opportunities for quantum computing

TU Delft researchers will work together in ten consortia with the entire knowledge chain and societal organisations

TU Delft researchers Akira Endo (EWI) and Daniel Tam (3mE) have been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. Javier Alonso-Mora has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. These European grants are awarded to ambitious ‘frontier research’ projects that last five years.

Many of the older ‘portiekflats’ (blocks of flats with a shared access stairwell) that are common throughout the Netherlands consume a vast amount of energy and therefore often end up being demolished. However, this type of flat does not necessarily have to disappear from the streetscape. Symbiotic Urban Movement (SUM) – a team of students from TU Delft – devised a plan to sustainably transform all 847,000 portiekflats in the Netherlands and to create more homes

Metastases in cancer are often caused by a few abnormal cells. These behave more aggressively than the other cancer cells in a tumour. Miao-Ping Chien and Daan Brinks are working together, from two different universities, on a method to detect these cells. Their research has now been published in Nature.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded two TU Delft researchers a Vici grant of up to 1.5 million euros. This will enable them to develop an innovative line of research and further expand their own research group for a period of five years. Vici is one of the largest personal scientific grants in the Netherlands and is aimed at advanced researchers.

In the fight against climate change the energy transition is a crucial weapon. That is why “speeding up the energy transition” is the theme of TU Delft's anniversary year – a year in which the university will reflect on its role in the energy transition, and in particular on how to accelerate it. The three events below are being organised as part of the anniversary year.

We generate more and more electricity from solar panels and windmills, but what if there is no wind and the sun is not shining? Will you still be able to charge your phone? This is one of the many questions that will be addressed in a brand new series of lectures by the MuseumJeugdUniversiteit. For this "green" series – made especially for children between the ages of 8 and 12 – this long-term collaboration between MuseumJeugdUniversteit and Science Centre Delft travels to the TU Delft campus, which celebrates its 180th anniversary this year.

Together with Renault, Delft robot engineers developed the Proactive Eco Mode, a new system that enables drivers to reach the desired speed faster, based on predictions of the future, while maintaining the eco fuel benefits. They have successfully demonstrated the system on French roads.

Solar foil represents the future. It can be applied in countless and unique ways – all the way from integrating it into traditional roof tiles through to creating new large-scale solar parks that reduce the price of our electricity. By signing a new four-year research contract, TU Delft and HyET Solar have sped up the introduction of the next generation of solar foil, bringing this vision of the future a significant step closer.

TU Delft will work in two of the five ELSA Labs that have been awarded in the NWA call 'Human AI for an inclusive society - towards an ecosystem of trust'. In these two ELSA Labs ('Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects') researchers, the government and businesses are working on knowledge about the development and application of reliable, human-centred AI in the fields of Defence and Public Safety respectively.

The TU Delft Executive Board has received a fresh internal report regarding possible irregularities in a few publications on Majorana research. It has been suggested that there may have been irregularities in data processing by one or more of the authors. These possible irregularities were found by some of the other authors following questions from scientists outside TU Delft.

On 8 February 2022, TU Delft launches a programme of four new massive open online courses on Intelligent and Integrated Energy Systems.