Archive

An international consortium, led by Delft University of Technology and the University of North Carolina, has for the first time succeeded in probing the molecular origins of recombination in RNA viruses. Hiccups during the copying process of viruses cause recombination to take place: the exchange of segments of viral RNA.

How do you install a wind turbine far out at sea when high waves and strong winds make its installation virtually impossible? With this question in mind, a team of researchers from TU Delft, in collaboration with Heerema Marine Contractors (HMC) and DOT B.V., boarded the world's largest crane vessel this week: Heerema's Sleipnir. As part of a major pioneering project, the FOX project, they are exploring floating wind turbine installation.

ProRail, TU Delft and Deltares will conduct an investigation over the next five years into the behaviour of trains travelling along our railway embankments. On 4 October 2021, they signed the RESET research programme agreement for this purpose. This research will focus on the consequences of increased and heavier rail traffic along with climate change on our railway embankments and how we can anticipate them. As there is little fundamental systematic knowledge in this field in Europe, this pioneering research may also assist other countries facing similar problems.

Delft PhD student Daan Sutmuller has developed a new, effective method in collaboration with the police that supports homicide investigation teams in collecting and prioritising interesting persons in the investigation more quickly. The promising method should make the investigation work more manageable and ensure that more homicide cases are solved. Sutmuller obtains his doctorate this Thursday with his dissertation 'Murder investigation in the digital age'.

In order to ensure that the electricity grid is prepared for the future, TU Delft, the Dutch government and partners including grid operator TenneT have joined forces to build a brand-new laboratory: the Electrical Sustainable Power Lab, otherwise known as the ESP Lab. The laboratory – described as a ‘veritable temple of sustainability’ – will be officially opened on the afternoon of Friday, 1 October 2021.

Robotic body-weight support (BWS) devices can play a key role in helping people with neurological disorders to improve their walking. The team that developed the advanced body-weight support device RYSEN in 2018 has since gained more fundamental insight in BWS but also concludes that improvement in this field is necessary.

Last year, computer engineers from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and Northwestern University introduced the world’s first battery-free Game Boy, which harvests both solar energy and the user’s kinetic energy from button mashing to power an unlimited lifetime of game play. The same team now introduces a new platform that enables makers, hobbyists and novice programmers to build their own battery-free electronic devices that run with intermittent, harvested energy.

Making a significant contribution to creating opportunities for a CO2-free energy system, this is what 150 representatives from the business community, knowledge institutions and government are working on within the Dutch AI Coalition. The Energy and Sustainability working group collaborated on the position paper 'AI as an accelerator of the energy transition', which sets out the opportunities for a CO2-free energy system. Researchers from TU Delft have made an active contribution to this agenda.

Overstroomde riolen, plastic afval, lekkages van waterleidingen… Ook onder de grond kent Nederland grote wateruitdagingen. Met menselijke kracht alleen kunnen we dat niet oplossen, zegt professor Zoran Kapelan. Daarom schakelt hij de hulp in van kunstmatige intelligentie en machine learning.

At the request of medical professionals, researchers at TU Delft developed a test method to check whether imported face masks met the safety requirements. And that was necessary, as it turns out, because in total only one-third of the 140 million face masks tested in 19 hospitals passed the safety test.

Every trace or other piece of evidence at a crime scene has to be thoroughly examined. Traces that cannot be taken away or stored, such as blood spatters, is visualised with a ruler to indicate its size. TU Delft and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) have developed a new method for the police that will soon make the ruler obsolete and make it easier to measure all kinds of forensic evidence.

The heavy precipitation along with the high water of July 2021 in the Netherlands and surrounding countries was an extreme and exceptional event with major social consequences in Limburg. Commissioned by the Expertise Network for Water Safety (ENW), a broad consortium of knowledge institutions, led by Delft University of Technology and Deltares, has now made an initial analysis of the available information on a range of topics.

On Monday 6 September, Delft University Fund awarded Max Mulder the title of Professor of Excellence 2021. Mulder is Professor of Control & Simulation in the Department of Control & Operations at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering (AE).

NWO has announced that Professor Lieven Vandersypen (TU Delft/QuTech) has been awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest award in Dutch Science.

Researchers from the technical universities of Delft and Munich have invented a new type of molecular trap that can hold a single protein in place for hours to study its natural behavior – a million times longer than before.

Researchers from the group of Stan Brouns (Delft University of Technology) have discovered a new CRISPR-Cas system that cuts RNA. The study will be published on August 26 in Science and is expected to offer many opportunities for the development of new applications in genetic research and biotechnology.

The performance of no fewer than four students at TU Delft were crowned with a medal at the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. Roos de Jong (Rowing) and Annete Duetz (Sailing) both won bronze and Stef Broenink (Rowing) won a silver medal. Dirk Uittenbogaard, a student in the Leiden-Delft Master’s degree programme in Industrial Ecology, won a gold medal for rowing (Men’s Quadruple Sculls).

Tussen een en twee op de vijf Uber-reizen hebben geen haalbaar alternatief in het openbaar vervoer. Het aandeel reizigers dat Uber verkiest boven openbaar vervoer neemt af naarmate de reistijd van het openbaar vervoer concurrerender is. Dat zijn twee bevindingen in een nieuw onderzoeksrapport over ritdiensten, dat gebaseerd is op een vergelijking van gegevens van Uber en het openbaar vervoer uit zes steden in de VS en Europa.

Catching the breeze may bring you gold but sail too close to the wind and you’ll miss the boat. Combined with a sailor’s intuition meteorologist Sukanta Basu’s highly detailed wind forecast may well help the Dutch sailing team secure a win at the Olympics this year.

Professor Karen Aardal was appointed as board member of the NWO Domain Science. As a professor at the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics, Aardal brings with her an enormous knowledge on the area of applied mathematics and theoretical computer science.

Three-times world champion in sailing Marcelien de Koning has been appointed the world's first ‘chef de emission’. With this NOC*NSF wants to promote making sports and society more sustainable. “An excellent idea”, according to professor Andy van den Dobbelsteen, Sustainability Coordinator at TU Delft. TU Delft has a long history of working with NOC*NSF on innovations in top-level sports and will be the first one helping the chef de emission with knowledge in the field of sustainability.

Onderzoekers stelden ruim 10.000 Nederlanders in staat de overheid te adviseren over klimaatbeleid. Het eindrapport is nu online.

It’s a decade since the creation of the Sand Motor, an artificial sand bank off the North Sea coast. What happens to a natural system following human intervention on such a large scale? That question has been the focus of professor of Coastal Engineering Stefan Aarninkhof’s research for the last ten years. The results, he hopes, will pave the way to a full-scale experimental climate lab.

Lunar Zebro, an ambitious team at TU Delft will work together with TNO (The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research) to build the lightest and smallest Moon rover to date.

TU Delft has been selected as a partner of the New European Bauhaus, a think-do tank initiated by the President of the European Commission.

TU Delft is ranked 57th in the QS World University Ranking 2021-2022, the same place as last year.

Energy transition is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The transition to sustainable energy is complex and requires change at multiple levels. Three Delft research groups, with an grant from NWO, will conduct research into system integration within the energy transition.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected the Venus orbiter EnVision as the fifth medium-class mission within its Cosmic Vision program. It marks the beginning of a new era of Venus exploration—last week NASA already announced two new missions to Earth' sister planet. SRON and TU Delft are part of the EnVision consortium.

On Thursday 3 June, the Delft University Fund awarded Max Mulder the title of Professor of Excellence 2021. Mulder is Professor of Control & Simulation in the Department of Control & Operations at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering (AE).

An international group of 39 scientists have published an article in Science arguing for more use of ventilation to combat COVID-19. However, they want to use their argument far more broadly than just the current pandemic, and to combat the spread of all respiratory infections by changing building designs. Philomena Bluyssen from TU Delft and Marcel Loomans from TU Eindhoven are two of the authors. The article was published on Thursday 13 May.

The Pandemic & Disaster Preparedness Center (PDPC) was officially opened on Friday May 21 at Erasmus MC. Researchers at the PDPC study future virus outbreaks and disasters to be better prepared.

Het afvangen en opslaan van CO2 is een van de vele technologieën die nodig zijn om klimaatverandering tegen te gaan. De technologie is beschikbaar en wordt al in diverse projecten toegepast, maar nog niet op wereldwijde schaal toegepast. Het gebrek aan kennis over de kosten van CO2-afvang en -opslag (CCS) kan ertoe leiden dat investeerders zich terugtrekken. Een wereldwijd consortium van twaalf onderzoekers op het gebied van CCS, onder leiding van Andrea Ramirez van de TU Delft, heeft samengewerkt aan een uitgebreide whitepaper. Het whitepaper helpt te begrijpen hoe de kosten van projecten voor CO2-afvang en -opslag correct kunnen worden geraamd.

Serge Hoogendoorn will be installed as a KNAW member on September 13. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has elected twenty-three new members, including three from abroad. Members of the KNAW, leading scientists from all disciplines, are elected on the basis of their scientific achievements. The KNAW has approximately five hundred and fifty members. Membership is for life.

Ridesharing can benefit from using pick-up and drop-off points and asking users to walk a small distance. Researchers at TU Delft have analyzed this by using a real dataset of 10.000 Manhattan taxi trips. They have published their results online in Transportation Research Part C.

Sustainability is a high priority at TU Delft. Not only is it a common thread in many of the university’s education, research and valorisation activities - the university is also taking steps towards making the campus more sustainable. In this regard, the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment is the first faculty which offers an entirely vegetarian menu at Ketelhuis starting 3 May. When the other food & beverage facilities at the faculty reopen, their assortment will also be fully vegetarian.