Stories of scientists

When frustration leads to inspiration for Open Science

According to Adarsh Kalikadien, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, open access publishing is not enough if you really want to perform open science, especially when you work with large data sets or self-designed software. "Freely accessible or not, a PDF full of messy data is useless to me as a fellow researcher. Publishing data and code openly is only of value if someone else can work with it."

Medical experts and engineers speak each other’s language in Delft

An outpatients’ centre for cancer patients is certainly not the first thing you would expect to encounter on TU Delft campus. ‘But the decision to choose Delft as the location for the Holland Proton Therapy Centre has actually proved to be a very smart move’, says Medical Director Prof. Marco van Vulpen.

The battery of the future is coming closer

Fast, safe and a bigger battery storage capacity are needed if the energy transition is to be successful. One advantage is that they will be able to store the excess solar and wind energy for later use. There is just one problem – the current generation of batteries have already reached their maximum capacity.

Precise proton therapy thanks to uncertainty algorithms

“10 million people a year die from cancer, but many millions survive long term after receiving radiotherapy treatments, so if you can make a computational model that increases effectiveness or decreases side-effects by even just a few per cent, that can help thousands of patients,” says Zoltán Perkó, a specialist in Deep Learning, AI and Computational Physics.

New heat pump material to combat global warming

Current coolant gases from air conditioners and fridges either contribute a significant amount to global warming, or otherwise they are dangerous to use. Bowei Huang and Michael Maschek from the Delft company Magneto are working on a safe and environmental friendly alternative for cooling: a unique solid material for heat pumps.

Pushing the boundaries of microscopy to understand cells better

Kristin Grußmayer pushes the boundaries of microscopy with new techniques to study the exact location of molecules, and to make extremely fast 3D images of the cell. Her research group will take a look at the early stage of Huntington’s disease on a very small scale, now possible thanks to these advanced microscopy methods: “One of the biggest challenges in the super resolution field is how to work with living cells while making sure they stay happy.”

This physicist’s greenhouse coating increases crop harvest

More and more greenhouses are being built worldwide due to their reliable environmental conditions; inside however, the amount of sunlight that plants can use for growth is limited. Physicist Sadiq van Overbeek from PHYSEE found a solution to this bottleneck.

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