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We generate more and more electricity from solar panels and windmills, but what if there is no wind and the sun is not shining? Will you still be able to charge your phone? This is one of the many questions that will be addressed in a brand new series of lectures by the MuseumJeugdUniversiteit. For this "green" series – made especially for children between the ages of 8 and 12 – this long-term collaboration between MuseumJeugdUniversteit and Science Centre Delft travels to the TU Delft campus, which celebrates its 180th anniversary this year.

The development of new technologies for biological wastewater treatment is turning our view of sludge upside down. Microbiologist Mark van Loosdrecht receives the 2022 Novozymes Prize for his pioneering work in copying and reusing nature’s mechanisms in wastewater treatment and resource recovery. Van Loosdrecht: “Treating wastewater will become good business in the future.”

The mechanisms connecting growth with cell size have been mysterious – up till now: in a recent publication in Current Biology, researchers from TU Delft and AMOLF have uncovered that the signaling molecule ppGpp is essential to regulate cell size. Surprisingly, they also discover cells adjust their sizes to concentrations of ppGpp, rather than strictly according to growth rate.

Arjen Jakobi (Department of Bionanoscience) receives the ERC Proof of Concept Grant for his groundbreaking research on cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). "This grant will allow us to take our new CryoChip technique for high resolution images of protein molecules to the next level for the development of new drugs," says Jakobi.

The Reactor Institute Delft (RID) continuously invests in better measuring methods and techniques in order to facilitate pioneering research. We have accelerated this with the OYSTER (Optimised Yield - for Science, Technology & Education - of Radiation) programme.

The cost of new technologies such as those used to make green hydrogen can quickly be reduced if the government applies a stable and targeted innovation policy. This is according to Paulien Herder, professor of Energy Systems and Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences. She is also a Topteam member in the Energy Top Sector. As the Captain of Science she represents knowledge institutions. Herder was also closely involved in the GroenvermogenNL proposal for green hydrogen and green chemistry that was accepted by the National Growth Fund.

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the ERC Starting Grants for young researchers. Four of them are scientists from TU Delft. This European grant of €1.5 million for a five-year programme is intended to enable individual scientists to build their own teams and conduct groundbreaking research.

Researchers from TU Delft found an unexpected new enzyme intermediate at work in enzymes that contain heme, a cofactor that’s vital for many processes in our body such as the breaking down of toxins in the liver. The researchers used new, rapid techniques, which are less invasive than existing methods. The results, published in ACS Catalysis, increase our understanding of heme proteins and enzymes and how they can be engineered.

NWO has awarded Veni grants to four researchers from the TNW faculty, with funding of up to 250,000 euros per grant. This will enable these researchers to further develop their own research ideas over a period of three years.

A team of researchers from the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium has managed to measure changes in the energy levels of a free radical molecule in a magnetic field. They were able to measure directly the thermoelectric currents inside the molecule, using a new method called thermocurrent spectroscopy. This method, published in Nano Letters, is an important tool for both chemical synthesis and single-molecule electronics.