Archive

The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants worth EUR 800,000 to five researchers at TU Delft. A Vidi grant enables them to set up their own research group to develop their own innovative line of research.

Extreme hydrological events are generally predicted to become more frequent and damaging in Europe due to warming climate. Researchers from TU Delft and Rice University (Houston) have now shown that, correcting for economic and demographic changes, there has been no increase in financial losses and fatalities from floods in the last 150 years. They have reported on their findings in Nature Communications.

Everyone can design – even school pupils are great designers, concludes Ianus Keller, lecturer in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft. In collaboration with 17 primary schools in the future municipality of Altena, he encouraged almost 700 pupils from years 3 and 4 to think about the design of their school bag.

In the new Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, TU Delft maintains a shared 51-60th position, just like in previous years. TU Delft is now the highest-ranking Dutch university on this list.

Mathematician and Professor of Science communication Ionica Smeets has been named Alumnus of the Year 2018. She was chosen by a jury, consisting of Tim van der Hagen (president of the Executive Board of the TU Delft) and Michael Wisbrun (president of the Delft University Fund), on recommendation of the EEMCS faculty, where Ionica received her degree in Applied Mathematics in 2005.

Researchers from the Universities of Antwerp, Perugia and Delft together with museum staff have painstakingly examined Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). He painted this iconic work, a composition dominated by yellow tints with some orange and blue accents, in 1889 in Arles, France.

Falling bars, a swinging hammer and objects on the track: anything to thwart your opponent! ‏On Wednesday 30 May, TU Delft student teams will battle it out against each other with their self-built remote-controlled karts to see who can complete the most laps of the slalom racing track in 7 minutes.

On Tuesday 22 May the Process & Energy lab was filled to the brim with e-Refinery. This brand-new consortium will help to electrify and decarbonise the chemical and energy industries with its unique integrated approach, ranging from materials to processes and their upscaling.

Technology such as MRI helps us to understand the processes that take place in biomass when we purify waste water with micro-organisms. We can use this knowledge to extract more energy and resources (and new pollution) from our own waste water. But we also need new knowledge to tackle problems in the rapidly expanding world cities, where waste water purification is often a relatively new concept. We can and must get much more out of our waste water. This is argued by Professor Merle de Kreuk, who will give her inaugural address at TU Delft on Wednesday, 23 May.

Rienk van der Slikke has developed a technique to monitor individual wheelchair mobility performance using small sensors. On Friday 25 May, he will be awarded his PhD at TU Delft for his work on the subject.

On Tuesday 15 May, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender paid a visit to TU Delft and Yes!Delft.

Philips has acquired NightBalance, the Delft University of Technology spin-off company that has developed a ‘Sleep Position Trainer’, to treat positional obstructive sleep apnea and positional snoring. Founder and CEO Eline Vrijland-Van Beest is thrilled that her company will be joining Philips. “Together, we will develop innovative solutions that help people around the world sleep better at night.”

The Netherlands needs to opt for a coastal system that is as adaptive as possible, taking maximum advantage of the coast’s natural resilience and its ability to organise itself. This is according to ecologist, Prof. Peter Herman, who will give his inaugural address at TU Delft on Wednesday, 9 May.

Titanium white is a pigment used in the 20th century by painters like Picasso and Mondriaan. The ‘bad’ version of this pigment can lead to early aging of paintings when expowed to UV light. TU Delft researcher Birgit van Driel has - in close cooperation with AkzoNobel, the Rijksmuseum and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, and within the context of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation+Art+Science+ (NICAS) - developed a straightforward method to estimate the potential risk to painting. This will enable museums to take timely action to prevent damage to paintings. On Wednesday 9 May, Birgit will be defending her PhD at TU Delft.

The 4TU.Federation has awarded a total of 22 million euros to five proposals within the framework of the call ‘High Tech for a Sustainable Future’, thus giving a strong impetus to research into sustainable technology.

In the same week as the worldwide release of Avengers: Infinity War, the latest Hollywood superhero film, the first papers and editorial have been published in the new superhero-themed online journal. The papers in Superhero Science and Technology focus on two members of the Avengers - the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes) and Iron Man (Tony Stark).

We love holidays on the beach and about a quarter of the world's population live on coasts because of the favourable economic location. But until now we have had only a very vague picture of how coastal areas have evolved worldwide over the years. Scientists in Delft are changing this. Researchers from Deltares, Delft University of Technology and IHE have analysed changes in 50,000 beaches over a 35-year period. They present their findings today in Nature Scientific Reports.

CRISPR-Cas9 has made gene editing a lot easier and will eventually help us erase hereditary diseases from our DNA.

Prof. Nick van de Giesen received an IBM Technology & Data grant in the form of free super computing power and weather data. The project of Prof. Van de Giesen and Camille le Coz (both from the Water Management department) focusses on the simulation of rainfall and weather data in Africa to increase farmer resilience.

TU Delft professors Isabel Arends, Jenny Dankelman and Andy van den Dobbelsteen each received a royal honour this year.

Researcher Jeroen van Oosterhout has developed a haptic assistance system that makes it easier to control two robots simultaneously. On Wednesday 1 May, he will be awarded his PhD at TU Delft for his work on the subject.

Dr.ir. Gerwin Smit from Biomechanical Engineering, 3mE faculty, TU Delft, has been nominated by New Scientist for the title of biggest scientific talent in the Netherlands and Flanders.

Prof. Dr. Kofi Makinwa, Professor Electronic Instrumentation and chair of the Micro Electronic department to the faculty of EEMCS, is selected as a new member of The Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW).

Researchers at Delft University of Technology, in collaboration with colleagues at the Autonomous University of Madrid, have created an artificial DNA blueprint for the replication of DNA in a cell-like structure.

A Dutch-Texan team found that most Houston-area drowning deaths from Hurricane Harvey occurred outside the zones designated by government as being at higher risk of flooding: the 100- and 500-year floodplains. Harvey, one of the costliest storms in US history, hit southeast Texas on 25 August 2017 causing unprecedented flooding and killing dozens. Researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and Rice University in Texas published their results today in the European Geosciences Union journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.

De hexapod, 60 ton zwaar en 6x5x3 meter groot, is de nieuwste aanwinst van de TU Delft: een testfaciliteit die krachten van 100 ton in alle zes richtingen kan aanbrengen. Het apparaat kan onder meer in 4 weken de vermoeiing in gelaste scheepsstukken nabootsen van 20 jaar varen op zee, maar is ook breder inzetbaar om constructies beter te kunnen ontwerpen.

TU Delft is taking part in three National Roadmap for Large-scale Scientific Infrastructure projects. The three projects concern measuring changes in the atmosphere by Ruisdael Observatory (where TU Delft is the coordinating university), EPOS-NL, on the European infrastructure for geological sciences, dangers and resources, and NEMI, on the Netherlands Electron Microscopy Infrastructure.

‘Weather’ is the result of a combination of many diverse factors, such as solar radiation, the concentration of greenhouse gases, air quality and humidity, local building density or vegetation, wind direction and a whole host of underlying physical and chemical processes.

Many types of mushroom have two different nuclei in their cells, one from the ‘father’ and another from the ‘mother’. Researchers at the universities of Delft, Utrecht and Wageningen have discovered that the genes from the parental DNAs are expressed at different times in mushroom development. “This means that when genes involved in mushroom formation are identified, we first need to find out whether the paternal or maternal nucleus is active,” says TU Delft doctoral candidate Thies Gehrmann. The research results were published in the journal PNAS on 11 April 2018.

The European Research Council has awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of 2,5 million euros to two professors from Delft University of Technology.

‘We find ourselves in an age where superhero films are immensely popular. With many students familiar with many of these characters and their superpowers, superheroes can facilitate a unique platform to aid in the dissemination of physics materials in the classroom’, says scientist Barry W. Fitzgerald of TU Delft. In a paper published in Physics Education on 5th April 2018, he considers Wonder Woman, Hawkeye and Invisible Woman.

Dutch universities strive for open access publication of their research. Increasing numbers of universities and lecturers around the world also want open education, the free sharing of educational resources, primarily online.

Since the breakthrough discovery of the Majorana particle in 2012 in Delft, researchers faced great challenges. An international team of researchers from the Netherlands (QuTech, Microsoft and Eindhoven University of Technology) and United States (JQI Maryland, UC Santa Barbara) joined forces to understand the next steps required to improve the experiments. Now, the scientists provide a complete toolbox for the final proof of Majorana existence, paving the way towards Majorana quantum bits. They publish their work in Nature.

Research by Pieter Smets of TU Delft and the KNMI shows that infrasound can be used for weather and climate forecasts. These inaudible low sound waves can be used to gain a better picture of the stratosphere, which can barely be measured in any other way. On Wednesday 28 March, Smets will be awarded his PhD at TU Delft for his work on this subject.

Researcher Gautham Ram Chandra Mouli developed a system which charges electric cars quickly and directly using solar power. On Monday 26 March, he will be awarded his PhD at TU Delft for his work on this subject.

The international Open Education Consortium is honouring TU Delft with an Open Education Award in the Open Policies category.