Stories of scientists

Spotlight on aggressive cancer cells

Metastases in cancer are often caused by a few abnormal cells. These behave more aggressively than the other cancer cells in a tumour. Miao-Ping Chien and Daan Brinks are working together, from two different universities, on a method to detect these cells.

Applying wastewater treatment technologies to medicine

Winnifred Noorlander, a Systems & Control student with a passion for entrepreneurship, is working on a new medicine for the treatment of sepsis. A life-threatening response of the body to an infection, sepsis causes 20% of all global deaths – 11 million each year. So how is a student without having any prior knowledge of biotechnology pursuing this research at the faculty of Applied Sciences? Why is she working on a more reliable answer to this highly lethal inflammatory disease?

A scale model of the brain

We have ten times more brain cells in our head than the number of people on the earth. Technical neurobiologist Dimphna Meijer is conducting research into these neurons by making scale models of the networks they form. Ultimately she hopes to be able to translate this knowledge into clinical practice. “The neurobiologist of the future is also an engineer.”

‘Phenomena is such a great word, too’. Delft’s quantum expert on shifting atoms

Sander Otte loves playing around with atoms. In his lab in Delft, his team patiently shifts atoms on the boundary between the quantum world and our own. 'You have to dare to let go of your intuition, and a world will open up for you.'

Comparing apples with pears under the microscope

Seeing tiny particles even better through a microscope – Teun Huijben, Best Graduate student of the Faculty of Applied Sciences, managed it for his Master’s thesis.

An all-time high for far-infrared space exploration

Next year, a helium balloon the size of a soccer stadium will bring a NASA telescope to the edge of space. This project is called GUSTO, and it will help scientists understand galactic evolution by probing interstellar gas. Its most important payload are three detectors developed by Jian Rong Gao and his teams at TU Delft and SRON, without which the telescope would be blind as to its mission purpose.

Looking over Vermeer’s shoulders

In 2018, Johannes Vermeer’s world-famous Girl with a Pearl Earring underwent a total ‘body scan’: using state-of-the-art techniques, the painting was studied in painstaking detail from top to bottom. It provided a wealth of new insights about the painting and the painter. Four TU Delft faculties worked on the project.

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