EWInners 2021

Although interaction between science and society is of enormous importance, science communication is still far from being recognised as integral to the tasks of science. The pilot fund ‘Science communication by scientists: Appreciated!’ – set up by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and administered by the Academy – takes a step towards showcasing and rewarding the many scientists who have dedicated themselves to science communication. A total of 96 applications have been submitted by 62 faculties, with all Dutch universities participating. Of these, 91 have been awarded funding. Each team has received € 10,000. At several faculties, the communicative efforts of (groups of) scientists around a particular topic have been appreciated. Two applications from the Faculty of EEMCS were accepted: the proposal by 1) Natasja de Groot and the proposal by 2) Marieke Kootte, Neil Budko and Theresia van Essen.

Over the next few years, Amsterdam Southeast will be serving as a test location for an innovative new neighbourhood energy platform. The platform is aimed at allowing local electricity grids to be managed intelligently in areas like Amsterdam Southeast where a lot of development is expected in the future. Part of the Southeast region of Amsterdam will be used to develop an initial simulation for the neighbourhood energy platform. This will be done to simulate all energy flows, relevant buildings and energy infrastructure. Thereafter, things like charging terminals, solar panels, new-builds, existing buildings and heat pumps in the platform will be inter-connected within the simulation, in order to research how energy can be distributed and exchanged in an intelligent manner. If the study demonstrates the effectiveness of the platform, it can be implemented in Southeast as well as other urban areas. A subsidy was awarded by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, and co-financing was provided by the Municipality of Amsterdam and other parties, so the neighbourhood energy platform could be developed. From our faculty, scientists Peter Palenksy and Arjen van der Meer, among others, are involved.

The increasing number of heat pumps, electric cars and solar panels in the built environment poses major challenges, such as the prevention of overload in the regional (and national) electricity system. However, increased use and development of these technologies also offers opportunities to deploy smart flexibility services in the built environment on a large scale. For example, by charging electric cars at night rather than during the daytime, when the electricity grid is much more heavily utilized. Heat pumps can also offer flexibility. The use of flexibility is often mentioned as an alternative to grid reinforcement. To determine how realistic this is, GO-e develops calculation tools and methodologies with which regional grid operators can make substantiated decisions about whether, when, where and how flexibility can be used to prevent overloading of the electricity grid. The newly formed GO-e (Built Environment Electrification) Consortium was recently awarded a grant of 5.7 million euros and will run until early 2024. The GO-e consortium includes EEMCS scientists Peter Palenksy and Arjen van der Meer.

Tiago was recently awarded a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) grant. The HFSP supports fundamental research that applies novel and interdisciplinary approaches to understand biological problems. In addition, the HFSP supports science that extends beyond national borders, bringing together different disciplines. Successful applications are (potentially) groundbreaking and contain a line of research that is different from all current research. To make it even more concrete: Tiago has been awarded an Early Career grant. This grant is for teams of researchers who are all within 5 years of establishing an independent laboratory and within 10 years of obtaining their PhDs.

Alexandru Christian Neagu & Jinhan Ba have won the 3 E-Royal SMIT BSc prize. This prize is awarded annually by the so-called Stichting 3 E. Under the guidance of José Rueda Torres, Alexandru and Jinhan wrote the prize-winning thesis. An (English) summary of the thesis: ‘The goal of this graduation project was to design a state-of-the-art central farm controller. The designed central farm controller distinguishes itself from prevailing controllers by including a subsystem (the optimisation unit) that contributes to an improvement in power transmission efficiency, decrease in maintenance costs and an increase in system reliability/robustness. This thesis describes the design process of the optimisation unit and the verification of its feasibility.’ The 3 E Field comprises Electrical Energy Engineering and Electricity Supply technology (including generation, transport, distribution, smart systems, environmentally friendly techniques and technical-economic optimization for electricity supply and utilization).

Innovative energy transition research receives a grant from the Dutch Research Council NWO. Different scientists will link artificial intelligence research to innovation in legislation and regulation to accelerate the energy transition. Among the researchers are José Rueda Torres & Mart van der Meijden (Intelligent Electrical Power Grids Group). MEGAMIND focuses on the so-called edges of the electricity system: the distribution networks and the electricity producing and consuming devices connected to them. The program aims to lift the mutual stranglehold between technology and regulation. If laws and regulations lag behind technological developments, they inhibit the innovation needed for sustainability, and vice versa.

The Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) announced nine new Senior Member Honorees. One of the people appointed as a Senior Member is EEMCS scientist Neil Yorke-Smith. Senior Member status is designed to recognize AAAI members who have achieved significant accomplishments within the field of artificial intelligence. To be eligible for nomination for Senior Member, candidates must be consecutive members of AAAI for at least five years and have been active in the professional arena for at least ten years, and they must demonstrate achievements in scholarship, leadership, and/or professional service. Founded in 1979, the AAAI is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.

Geert Leus recently won an important award in the field of signal processing, the so-called Technical Achievement Award. The award ceremony took place during the EUSIPCO conference. During this conference the latest technological developments in the field of signal processing are discussed. With impact on computer vision, speech processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning to name a few.

Aleksandra Lekić has received the best paper award for 2020 in the International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications. In this paper, Aleksandra and her colleagues present a novel nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) formulation for the transient control of a DC‐DC converter. They demonstrate that a real‐time implementation of the proposed NMPC scheme using the PANOC solver can be efficiently applied to control DC‐DC converters in the microsecond range. 

How can we reduce local congestion in the electricity grid, while offering national energy markets more flexibility? The energy transition will present our electricity system with some unique challenges in the future. Starting on 1 April 2021, partners in Utrecht, Arnhem and Delft will join together in the ROBUST project to build a robust, flexible and future-proof electricity system for entire urban regions. One important pillar of the project will involve bi-directional charging for electric cars. ROBUST was awarded 3.3 million euros. From EEMCS, Simon Tindemans and Peter Palensky are involved.

Eelco Visser recently received the Most Influential OOPSLA Paper Award. The OOPSLA is an annual conference on topics related to object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications. The papers are judged on the basis of the influence they have had over the past ten years. Visser's paper is about Spoofax, a platform that allows you to build your own programming language. In this post, Visser reconstructs how the paper originated. He also looks back at the first version of the Spoofax system, and explains how Spoofax (and all the research that has resulted from it) has developed since 2010.

Taico Aerts has won the VERSEN Master Thesis Award. VERSEN is the Dutch National Association for Software Engineering. Its mission is to bring together researchers, educators and practitioners in the field of software engineering in The Netherlands. Taico's master's thesis was about Statix, a language which generates a type checker from a declarative specification. However, Statix is not fast enough for quick feedback in IDEs because it always has to reanalyze all files. In his thesis, Taico improves the analysis time of Statix by applying the ideas of separate compilation to create a model for incremental analysis.

During the 2021 International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC), researchers at QuTech and the Faculty of EEMCS of TU Delft were awarded the ISSCC 2020 Jan Van Vessem Award for Outstanding European Paper. Since 1954, ISSCC is the premiere conference to present academic and industrial advances in integrated circuit with more than 3000 yearly attendees. At last year’s ISSCC, the researchers presented the design of an integrated circuit able to operate at extremely low temperatures while controlling qubits. This breakthrough brings us closer to realize large-scale quantum computers, which will solve problems intractable by even the most powerful supercomputers.

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy has allocated 5.7 million euro to FLEXINet. In the upcoming years, the FLEXINet consortium will develop hybrid energy storage systems – capable of storing both heat and electricity. Pavol Bauer, professor at TU Delft and project leader and coordinator: ‘The aim of FLEXINet is a system that accelerates the energy transition. We hope to make a substantial contribution to reaching climate targets by cleverly combining various techniques – think of blending recycled batteries with flexible heat pumps and the charging of electric cars.’