Archive

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.

A publication in Science Advances sheds new light on where and how much plastic flows into the oceans via rivers.

Researchers led by Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) used 3D printing to create a novel, environmentally-friendly and living material made of algae that has many potential applications.

De Delftse hoogleraren Pieternel Levelt, Jack Pronk en Kees Vuik hebben dit jaar een Koninklijke Onderscheiding ontvangen.

Today the first awards were announced from the pilot fund Science Communication by Scientists Appreciated! Despite the great importance of interaction between science and society, science communication is still far from being recognized as a fully-fledged part of a scientific task package. The Pilot Fund Scientific Communication by Scientists: Valued! - instituted by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and implemented by the KNAW, is a step in the direction of making visible and rewarding the large group of scientists who are structurally committed to science communication.

Two TU Delft researchers have been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant.

An international photovoltaics working group has developed a new transparent material to serve as a top layer for solar cells, based on nanocrystals. According to simulations performed by the participating TU Delft researchers, this layer can increase the efficiency of mass-produced solar cells to within a percent of their practical limit.

How does someone fall down after a push or jump? How to do good research at a crime scene? Can a computer model determine the time of death? And how do you get all traces out of a phone in a good way? These are just a few examples of studies that TU Delft and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) are conducting together. Today, the collaboration has been strengthened by signing a joint "Memorandum of Understanding".

We’re all familiar with the step tracker these days. Now there’s something new: the stumble tracker. This invention by TU Delft is helping a trauma surgeon at Erasmus MC to measure whether people using a new kind of prosthetic leg stumble less frequently. ‘This partnership has a bright future.’

A team of researchers from QuTech in the Netherlands reports realization of the first multi-node quantum network, connecting three quantum processors. In addition, they achieved a proof-of-principle demonstration of key quantum network protocols. Their findings mark an important milestone towards the future quantum internet and have now been published in Science.

A parking lot with solar panels where renewable energy generation, electric charging and energy storage are cleverly integrated. In the Municipality of Dronten, the official opening of a parking lot with 1,100 solar panels is taking place today, which, in combination with a large battery, will make the town hall energy-neutral.

Researcher Chirlmin Joo of TU Delft will receive a VICI grant for developing a method to sequence proteins one at a time. He will receive 1.5 million euros from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

For the next ten years TU Delft will allocate 22 million euro to set up and shape an extensive Climate Action Programme, focusing not only on additional investments in research and education but also on improving the sustainability of TU Delft campus.

Zuid-Holland's economy and knowledge and innovation infrastructure will be strengthened thanks to investments from the National Growth Fund announced today by the demissionary government. The money will go towards improving accessibility, Health, Quantum, Green Power and Artificial Intelligence.

On September 1, 2020, part of the quay of the Grimburgwal in Amsterdam collapsed. The primary causes appear to be the different construction of the narrow quay, the locally deeper canal bed, and the weakening of masonry due to collisions. This is the result of the research conducted by a research team composed of experts from TU Delft, Deltares, AMS Institute, and SkyGEO, led by Mandy Korff (TU Delft/Deltares), on behalf of the City of Amsterdam. The full report with conclusions and recommendations for other quay walls in the city was published by the City of Amsterdam on April 8, 2021.

This week the Dutch project ABOARD (A personalized medicine approach for Alzheimer’s disease), a collaboration of more than thirty partners, has been launched. ABOARD aims to prepare for a future in which Alzheimer’s disease is stopped before dementia has started. ABOARD achieves this by improving diagnostic markers, developing personalized risk scores and by focusing on prevention through increased awareness of dementia and brain health.

Researcher Deborah Gernat has created a new method to further develop the taste of non-alcoholic beer, in collaboration with Heineken. The technique, which is based on molecular sieves, gives brewers a new tool to bring the taste of non-alcoholic beer closer to that of regular beer. The first tests showed that the sweet 'wort taste' that often characterizes alcohol-free beer can be reduced using this method. On April 9th, Deborah Gernat will receive her doctorate on this subject at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).

Marien van der Meer will become Vice President Operations (VPO) in the Executive Board of TU Delft. The Supervisory Board has appointed Van der Meer as of 1 August 2021. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors/CFOO of the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Netherlands Cancer Institute.

Een bijna lege telefoon kan bij rampen het verschil betekenen tussen leven en dood. TU Delft onderzoeker Indushree Banerjee heeft daarom een nieuw energie-efficiënt en betrouwbaar noodcommunicatiesysteem ontworpen voor smartphones. Het systeem maximaliseert het aantal mensen dat gedurende een langere periode kan communiceren en kan daarmee levens redden in getroffen gebieden.

Researchers at TU Delft have expanded upon a clever trick that increases the speed of electron microscope imaging by a factor of twenty. A simple adjustment is all that is needed: applying a voltage to the specimen holder. Through this simple intervention, a specimen that the electron microscope would normally take a week to image can now be inspected in a single night or one working day.

TU Delft is building the Delft High-Performance Computing Centre (DHPC). This supercomputer complements existing national and cloud-based facilities, and offers academics and students greater flexibility when conducting their research. The arrival of the supercomputer is accompanied by a comprehensive training programme addressing the effective use of computing facilities.

The ventilation system in the Thialf ice stadium creates an airflow that affects the skaters. This is the conclusion of TU Delft aerodynamics researcher Alexander Spoelstra. He was commissioned by Thialf to closely map out the airflow, after skaters asked questions about the stadium's ventilation system. Spoelstra used a research set-up made up of lasers, helium bubbles and high-speed cameras. The technical report of the investigation was published online on 26 March.

In preparation for cell division, cells need to copy (‘replicate’) the DNA that they contain. A team of researchers from TU Delft, collaborating with investigators from the Francis Crick Institute in London, has now shown that the protein building blocks involved in the initial steps of DNA replication are mobile but reduce their speed at specific DNA sequences on the genome. Their findings, which will be published on 26 March in the open-access journal Nature Communications, were facilitated using an integrated approach involving biophysics and biochemistry that will propel new discoveries in the field.

The heart of any computer, its central processing unit, is built using semiconductor technology, which is capable of putting billions of transistors onto a single chip. Now, researchers from the group of Menno Veldhorst at QuTech, a collaboration between TU Delft and TNO, have shown that this technology can be used to build a two-dimensional array of qubits to function as a quantum processor. Their work, a crucial milestone for scalable quantum technology, was published today in Nature.

TU Delft researchers and 20 partners will develop reliable and safe wireless broadband connections using light instead of radio waves. They anticipate that this technology will allow us to securely send and process digital data at high speeds, with low latency. For this research project, the team has been awarded €4.1 million from the Dutch Research Council’s (NWO) Perspectief programme. TU Delft is also participating in the other five consortia that received Perspectief funding.

The authors of the 2018 article Quantized Majorana conductance have retracted this article. The authors were alerted to problems by two scientists in the same research area and then went on to re-examine their earlier measurements. In doing so, they found that the main conclusion had not been adequately substantiated.

Onderzoekers van de TU Delft hebben een test ontwikkeld waarmee ze specifieke stukjes genetisch materiaal kunnen opsporen, waarna de uitslag met het blote oog af te lezen is. Met de test kunnen onder meer virussen, zoals het coronavirus, en antibioticaresistente bacteriën snel en goedkoop worden gedetecteerd. De resultaten zijn gepubliceerd in Biophysical Journal.

Scientists of Wageningen University & Research, TU Delft and Erasmus MC have developed an online tool that helps determine how indoor spaces can be designed and used corona proof. With the OpenSmartTogether tool, restaurant owners can limit the risks of the spreading of the coronavirus in their restaurant. The researchers are inviting restaurant owners to participate in an online pilot.

Today, TU Delft launches Tech for Health | Better healthcare thanks to Delft technology. The university is shining a spotlight on its research innovations that contribute to the improvement of healthcare, especially in countries like The Netherlands.

Just like last year, the World University Rankings by Subjects 2021, published on 3 March, places TU Delft in a respectable 15th position in the broad category Engineering & Technology. Ten disciplines, including Architecture, Civil & Structural Engineering, Mechanical, Aeronautical & Manufacturing Engineering and Environmental Sciences, are ranked in the global top 20.

What does the Dutch population think about Dutch climate policy? Researchers from TU Delft and Utrecht University invite thousands of Dutch people to contribute their ideas.

As a ‘climate university’, TU Delft aims to be carbon neutral and circular by 2030. Information regarding CO2 emissions on campus is essential to realising this ambition. The CO2 performance ladder methodology has now been used to map emissions in 2019.