Research News

We are Energy for Refugees (EFR), consisting of seven international TU Delft students, doing our masters in Construction, Civil Engineering and Sustainable Energy Systems. The situation in the refugee camps urges us to stand up and use our capabilities and knowledge to provide sustainable solutions. We need you for the execution: help us save camp PIKPA by donating!

Philips has acquired NightBalance, the Delft University of Technology spin-off company that has developed a ‘Sleep Position Trainer’, to treat positional obstructive sleep apnea and positional snoring. Founder and CEO Eline Vrijland-Van Beest is thrilled that her company will be joining Philips. “Together, we will develop innovative solutions that help people around the world sleep better at night.”

On Saturday 26 May, TU Delft will be organising the last Open Day of this academic year. Secondary school students and their parents will be given information about programmes in two-hour rounds. The information sessions for Marine Technology and Clinical Technology will take place in our building; Mechanical Engineering will be in the Aula (Auditorium and Senate Room) as a result of the amount of visitors.

The Netherlands needs to opt for a coastal system that is as adaptive as possible, taking maximum advantage of the coast’s natural resilience and its ability to organise itself. This is according to ecologist, Prof. Peter Herman, who will give his inaugural address at TU Delft on Wednesday, 9 May.

Titanium white is a pigment used in the 20th century by painters like Picasso and Mondriaan. The ‘bad’ version of this pigment can lead to early aging of paintings when expowed to UV light. TU Delft researcher Birgit van Driel has - in close cooperation with AkzoNobel, the Rijksmuseum and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, and within the context of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation+Art+Science+ (NICAS) - developed a straightforward method to estimate the potential risk to painting. This will enable museums to take timely action to prevent damage to paintings. On Wednesday 9 May, Birgit will be defending her PhD at TU Delft.

The 4TU.Federation has awarded a total of 22 million euros to five proposals within the framework of the call ‘High Tech for a Sustainable Future’, thus giving a strong impetus to research into sustainable technology.

Remco Hartkamp, tenure-track lecturer of computational chemical physics at the Department of Process & Energy, developed a new method, together with researchers from the CNRS in France and the NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan, that will make it easier to measure the concentration of different electrolytes in the body using a nanotransistor.

In the same week as the worldwide release of Avengers: Infinity War, the latest Hollywood superhero film, the first papers and editorial have been published in the new superhero-themed online journal. The papers in Superhero Science and Technology focus on two members of the Avengers - the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes) and Iron Man (Tony Stark).

Prof. Nick van de Giesen received an IBM Technology & Data grant in the form of free super computing power and weather data. The project of Prof. Van de Giesen and Camille le Coz (both from the Water Management department) focusses on the simulation of rainfall and weather data in Africa to increase farmer resilience.

TU Delft professors Isabel Arends, Jenny Dankelman and Andy van den Dobbelsteen each received a royal honour this year.

Access to safe drinking water is a global challenge, particularly affecting the rural poor in developing countries. This urgent problem requires new, smart solutions for the removal of a wide range of contaminants of global concern, such as arsenic, fluoride, pathogens and antibiotic resistant genes.

Starting 1 May 2018, the new Electrochemical Transformation of CO2 chair will commence at the Department of Process & Energy. Earl Goetheer, expert in the area of sustainable energy, has been hired as part-time lecturer. Goetheer is extremely experienced in the area of process technology and separation technology and works at TNO as principal scientist of Process Technology.

Davood Farhadi Machekposhti, PhD-candidate at the Department of Precision and Microsystems Engineering has developed a new method for the design of compliant micro transmission mechanisms which multiply the motion frequency of cyclic input motion.