Archive

On Friday 30 November, the festive opening celebration of HollandPTC will take place in the Prinsenhof museum in Delft. Recently patients are being treated with proton therapy, a new form of radiotherapy against cancer for the Netherlands, in the outpatient centre HollandPTC located on the campus of the TU Delft. Parallel to these treatments, TU Delft is working together in HollandPTC with the LUMC and Erasmus MC medical centres on innovations in the care of cancer patients. Treatment, education and research go hand in hand to achieve better and responsible care.

Why does quantum mechanics work so well for microscopic objects, yet macroscopic objects are described by ‘classical physics’? This question has bothered physicists since the development of quantum theory more than a 100 years ago. Researchers of Delft University of Technology and the University of Vienna have now devised a macroscopic system that exhibits entanglement between mechanical phonons and optical photons. They tested the entanglement using a Bell test, one of the most convincing and important tests to show a system behaves non-classically.

If you think you can explain a scientific concept, on stage, to a general audience in just 3 minutes - or if you want to learn how to do this! - , then register for the TU Delft FameLab heat.

On 23 November former Rector Magnificus Karel Luyben was appointed chairman of the Executive Board of EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) in the presence of the Austrian Minister for Education and Science Heinz Fassman and representatives of the European Commission.

This week a team of researchers from TU Delft, Van Oord and Australia’s national science agency CSIRO are travelling to the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia to test a new method for the large-scale rehabilitation of coral.

We are living longer and longer these days. And the older we get, the higher the chance of becoming afflicted with an age-related disease, such as stroke. As many as three million people have a stroke every year in Europe. There is a high probability (40%) that many of those who survive will not be able to walk by themselves, unassisted, after three weeks. At which point they will need rehabilitation. But if an increasing number of elderly people want to rehabilitate, then that’s going to put more and more pressure on therapists. Or will it? Probably not, according to Heike Vallery, professor of human motor augmentation at Delft University of Technology. She invented a robotic support system - the RYSEN™. - with a Swiss-Dutch consortium that is 3 metres wide and 10 metres long, which is fastened to the ceiling. RYSEN™ will be launched today by Motek.

Subsidence in The Netherlands is much greater than expected, according to data from the new Dutch Land Subsidence Map presented this week.

A robotic 3D-printed chaise longue that can be transformed into a bed (and back again). This creation by TU Delft researchers can now be seen in the Delft Science Centre.

On Friday, 16 November, Prof. Neelke Doorn gave her inaugural address as professor of Ethics of Water Engineering.

Ahold Delhaize is set to join forces with TU Delft, RoboValley and YES!Delft to explore new robotics applications in the retail sector.

Calvin Rans, assistant professor in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering (AE), has been chosen TU Delft’s Best Teacher of 2018.

The NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) has announced the new research programmes that will be part of its ‘Perspective for Top Sectors' funding programme which has a budget of 28 million euros. These research programmes will involve scientists working with businesses and civil-society organisations on new lines of research that transcend the boundaries of scientific disciplines. TU Delft is involved in five of the six programmes which have been approved.

According to Rob Goverde, professor of Railway Traffic Operations & Management, Dutch railways should switch much faster to the modern European ERTMS communication standard for rail traffic control and safety. This is a key message in his inaugural address to be held at TU Delft on Friday, 9 November.

Agnieszka Stelling explores how sound impacts cyclist traffic safety. She will obtain her doctorate from TU Delft on Monday, 5 November 2018 with research into this subject.

While most people did not think about heating their houses during the last hot summer months, researchers at TU Delft did exactly that (and not just the last months). Scientists involved in geothermal research have good reasons to look forward: the Board of the University has made a decision-in-principle for a next step towards realising a geothermal research well.

Today, the European Commission announced that its Quantum Flagship Programme will contribute 10 million euro to the development of a blueprint for a future quantum internet.

TU Delft students have devised and developed a method for detecting gene doping. This method, called ADOPE (Advanced Detection of Performance Enhancement) has the potential to combat the abuse of gene therapy in sport. Through this project, the students in the iGEM team aim to highlight how important it is that synthetic biology is used safely. They presented their idea at last week’s International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Boston, winning prizes for their new application and product design.

The ‘Drones in Water Management’ event organised by Rijkswaterstaat on 23 October saw the kick-off and signing of a new project.

The introduction (or reintroduction) of plants and open water is the best way of combating extreme heat in our cities, according to PhD defendant Anna Solcerova.

A quantum internet may very well be the first quantum information technology to become reality. Researchers at QuTech in Delft, The Netherlands, today published a comprehensive guide towards this goal in Science.

In the coming years, TU Delft will be conducting research into the possible restoration and modernisation of the Aula Building, which is a listed monument in the Netherlands.

On 4 October during the Innovation Expo in Rotterdam, the Finnish company Bluefors announced that it will join the Delft quantum technology community and open an R&D office on the TU Delft campus.

Today (5 October 2018), Delft University Fund announced the eight TU Delft Best Graduates 2018.

To fly safely, aircraft need accurate updates on wind and temperature. But together, aircraft can also act as a sensor network that provides information to make weather models and predictions better, researchers at TU Delft have found. This week they publish their findings in PLOS One.

In music recommender systems, it’s important to design user control that hits the sweet spot between the perceived quality of recommendations and acceptable cognitive load, concludes TU Delft researcher Nava Tintarev. Together with colleagues from KU Leuven, and research with the Spotify API, she will present these findings at the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems in Vancouver, on Wednesday October 3rd.

How do we address our responsibilities towards each other and to society? It is important that we remain in consultation on this issue and take any necessary action. This is why the TU Delft Executive Board approved the ‘Vision on Integrity 2018-2024’ on 25 September 2018.

The Nuon Solar Team has won the Sasol Solar Challenge in South Africa once again. During a couple of exhausting days, filled with technical setbacks as well as human error, the team twice lagged far behind their Japanese rivals.

The new MARCH III by TU Delft student team Project MARCH has won the Cybathlon Experience in Düsseldorf, the international obstacle race for exoskeletons. Entrants from several countries competed in the test of robotic harnesses for people with paraplegia, ending on 29 September. Together with ‘pilot’ Sjaan Quirijns, who has had paraplegia since 2000, MARCH III achieved the fastest time and the highest number of points. Thanks to improvements to the suit and intensive training of its wearer, the team successfully completed a four-obstacle course in just under 9.5 minutes. Project MARCH gained particular plaudits for the independent functioning of its device.

TU Delft is 58th in the global Times Higher Education (THE) Ranking this year, an increase of five places.

TU Delft has provided two of the three proposals that are competing for the tenth Earth Explorer mission by ESA, which is planned for 2027-2028. The Earth Explorer missions are aimed at Earth observation, one of the important aims of the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Ruisdael Observatory – named after the 17th-century painter Jacob van Ruisdael – combines a nationwide dense network of measuring points with high-resolution simulations and the necessary computing power in order to map out changes in local weather, air quality and climate. The official opening of the observatory is on 27 September, with a meeting in the grounds of the KNMI measuring station at Cabauw (Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research, CESAR). In April this new top-class research facility was awarded a certificate from NWO’s National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific infrastructure.

Researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) have developed new technology that enables a drone to record all stationary and moving objects (such as trees, masts, birds of prey, helicopters) during autonomous flight and continuously alter its flight path to avoid them.

Last Wednesday, at the qualification for the starting position at the Sasol Solar Challenge 2018 in South Africa, the Japanese were just one second quicker than the Nuon Solar Team. So the Dutch team will start at Saturday 22 September, with their solar car Nuna9S, on the second position.

The field of optical microscopy research has developed rapidly in recent years. Thanks to the invention of a technique called super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, it has recently become possible to view even the smaller parts of a living cell. Now, by making a smart refinement to that technique, researchers at TU Delft have pushed its boundaries even further. Where previously objects measuring up to 10-20 nanometres could be observed, their method makes it possible to focus on structures of as tiny as 3 nanometres across.

Cyclist Lieke de Cock won the world championship for cycling in the Nevada desert in the US with a speed of 120 km/h.

Today sees the launch of the new version of the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Academic Integrity. This new version revises and expands on the code of conduct first introduced in 2004, reflecting international developments in the field of academic integrity that have taken place since then.

A novel insect-inspired flying robot, developed by TU Delft researchers from the Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab), has been presented in Science (14 September 2018).

Marileen Dogterom, Professor of Bionanoscience at TU Delft, has been awarded the NWO Spinoza Prize; the highest award in Dutch science. Dogterom carries out research into the dynamics in living cells and leads a consortium which is aiming to build an entirely artificial cell.

One superpower that gains constant attention is that of impenetrability, a power possessed by superheroes like Luke Cage, Wonder Woman, Superman and Colossus. In a recent paper in Advances in Physiology Education, Barry W. Fitzgerald considers how Colossus’ skin might work.