Twelve Veni awards for TU Delft researchers

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant worth up to 250,000 euros to twelve highly promising young scientists from TU Delft. The grant provides the laureates with the opportunity to further elaborate their own ideas during a period of three years.

The awards have been granted to:

Casper Bach Poulsen (Software Technology)
Composable en Safe-by-Construction programmeren van taaldefinities
Type-checked languages are essential tools for developing robust software because they automatically guarantee the absence of certain errors. But the complexity of defining and composing type-checked languages hinders language innovation and improvement. This research project will reduce that complexity.

Paola De Magistris (Bionanoscience)
The great escape
Genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA molecules, that exit from the cell nucleus to produce proteins. Scientists will unravel the mechanism of this crucial exit process by creating a minimalistic system mimicking export through the nuclear pores. This will potentially open new paths to study transport-related diseases.
More information.

Giulia Giordano (Delft Center for Systems and Control)
Niet-lineaire onderling gekoppelde systemen: een structurele aanpak
Nonlinear interconnected dynamical systems are ubiquitous. Studying their behaviour is important, but challenging without knowing parameter values. This project develops a new structural approach to study the behaviour of classes of these systems, when only the system structure is known.

Michele Laureni (Environmental Biotechnology)
Microbiële N2O-respiratie tegen klimaatverandering
N2O is a potent greenhouse gas, 300 times stronger than CO2. Denitrification is the only known microbial pathway capable to transform N2O to innocuous N2. This project proposes a multidisciplinary approach to advance our fundamental understanding of the principles controlling denitrification as a mean to counteract N2O emissions.
More information.

Zoë Robaey (Biotechnology and Society)             
Juist handelen, zonder alle kennis te bezitten
Responsible innovation takes into account how professionals can act responsibly even when they lack knowledge. In biotechnology, this is challenging because innovations with living organisms are never fully controllable. My research develops a framework for biotechnology professionals to cultivate qualities for doing the right thing, even without knowing everything.
More information.

Masoud Babaie (Microelectronics)
Energiezuinige, mm-formaat radiofrequentiezendontvangers voor Internet-der-dingen toepassingen (PaTRIOT)
Miniaturization of wireless implantable medical devices to sub-mm dimensions can play a critical role in our future healthcare systems. However, the size of those devices is currently limited by off-chip crystal oscillators. This proposal introduces a new digital-intensive solution to break that barrier and enable fully integrated and implantable radios.

Miguel Bessa (Materials Science and Engineering)
Duurzame kunststoffen van kunstmatige intelligentie
In an ideal world, end-of-life plastic products would be separated and recycled into pure plastics to be reused in new products. In reality, recycled plastics are a low performance plastic mixture. This work uses artificial intelligence to characterize and design these mixtures to achieve better performance than ever before.

Thomas Burdyny (Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage)
Een revolutie teweegbrengen met koolstof: het ontwerpen van commerciële CO2-elektrolyse-apparaten
Our current energy infrastructure and economy requires an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels. Renewable electricity sources are a useful start in this revolution, but are unable to directly replace many fuels and chemicals. Here, researchers will design efficient systems which use electricity to convert CO2 directly into chemicals.
More information.

Anne-Catherine Dieudonné (Engineering Geology)
Het zelf-herstellend vermogen van klei
Clays have a superpower: like wounds heal, cracks in clays have the capability to naturally close and repair. The researcher will study the mechanisms of self-healing in clays at a microscopic scale to better predict the durability and stability of geotechnical structures, such as radioactive waste disposals, dikes and landfills.

Mark van de Ruit (Biomechatronics & Human-Machine Control)
Hoe regelt het zenuwstelsel onze reflexen tijdens beweging?
We continuously use our reflexes to move optimally and deal with possible disturbances. But how does our central nervous system tune these reflexes? Researchers replace the old-fashioned reflex hammer with novel, quantitative assessment techniques to contribute to improved knowledge and diagnosis of movement disorders, for example after stroke.  

Feijia Yin (Flight Performance and Propulsion)
Vlieg groen: de klimaatvriendelijke voortstuwingstechnologie in de toekomst
While alternative fuels and electric propulsion are being considered for sustainable aviation, the subsequent climate impact remains ambiguous, as CO2 accounts for less than 50% of the total aviation radiative forcing. The true climate impact of the aforementioned technologies will be evaluated including the combined effects of CO2 and non-CO2.

Frederik Zietzschmann (Sanitary Engineering)
Problematische waterverontreinigende stoffen verwijderen
Water pollution is increasingly problematic due to industrial or pharmaceutical residues which are ever more resistant to degradation and removal. The researcher will develop new materials and process technologies to address these contaminants. The goal is to improve water quality and, ultimately, environmental and human health.