Archive

In an era where computing power continues to grow at an exponential rate, the importance of high-performance computing (HPC) cannot be understated. Leading the charge in the HPC market is Fujitsu. This week, Professor Kees Vuik, chair of Delf High Performance Computing Centre, visited Fujitsu's headquarters to meet with the CTO Vivek Mahajan, discussing the future of HPC and potential applications of quantum computing.

It is vital to the increase the reliability of the European electricity system. The electricity grid needs to be ready for a drastic increase of renewable energy and more resilient to future shocks (such as cyber-attacks). That is why 77 partners, from 15 European countries, have come together through the TwinEU consortium project to create a digital twin of the entire European electricity grid. TU Delft is one of the prominent partners within this project and is very excited to have won the grand proposal together with all the leading stakeholders.

The Veni grant is a funding instrument from the Talent Programme of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). It allows researchers who have recently obtained their PhD to conduct independent research and develop their ideas for a period of three years. The Veni grant amounts to a maximum of EUR 280,000. A total of 17 researchers from TU Delft received a Veni, including 6 promising young researchers from the EEMCS faculty. A fantastic achievement by these researchers!

The Delft Space Institute is taking significant steps towards lunar exploration by investing 200K Euros into the Moonshot program; an initiative that seeks to advance science and technology solutions for lunar surface missions. Researchers and students from diverse faculties will join forces to pursue this shared goal.

By participating in six of the eighteen prestigious Dutch 'Groeifondsen', the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) has strengthened its commitment to a sustainable and responsibly digital future. With these funds, the Netherlands' positions in sectors such as 6G technology, complex microelectronic communications systems, battery technology, and sustainable solar panel production will be consolidated, spearheading the development in these critical areas.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) announced its contribution of 15 million euros to PlantXR, a CropXR research programme into 'smart breeding' of extra resilient crops (eXtra Resilient, XR). This impulse brings CropXR's total budget to over €90 million for the next 10 years. NWO’s grant marks the start of the new Dutch institute CropXR, which integrates plant biology, computational modelling, and artificial intelligence into 'smart breeding methods'. Those will be used to develop crop varieties that are more resilient to climate change and less dependent on chemical crop protection. In CropXR, TU Delft works together with Utrecht University, Wageningen University and Research, the University of Amsterdam and dozens of plant breeding, biotech and processing companies on basic scientific research, data collection and data sharing, education, and advancing broad application of the results.

A sustainable future is the only future. That is why the energy transition is so important. It is a worldwide, structural change to reshape energy production and shift away from fossil fuels, towards clean sources like hydro, wind and solar power. But even though this transition is a movement at the forefront of change, it is still lacking in certain areas. Most notably, women are significantly underrepresented in the energy sector and transition. TU Delft, together with many international partners, are working on solving this issue within the FemPower project and trough the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Gender Equality in the Clean Energy Transition.

Fluid mechanics, the scientific study of how liquids move and interact, plays an indispensable role in advancing our scientific understanding of the world around us. It is part of the bedrock upon which many areas of science, from physics and engineering to medicine and even ecology, are built. As it stands, science has already deciphered much of its intricate landscape. Yet, many open problems continue to be a frontier of uncharted knowledge, part of which Manuel Gnann’s Vidi research aims to explore.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science is pleased to announce that Pieter Telleman has started as Director of Delft Cleanrooms starting from May 1st. Initially, he will work part-time alongside his current job at MESA+ in Twente, but will be available full-time for this position from August 1st.

Our world knows more and more supercomputers. But do not be mistaken: the most efficient – and perhaps more importantly: the most flexible – computing is done in the brain, human or otherwise. So what can we learn from how the brain computes? Charlotte Frenkel, recently recognized by NWO as one of the Netherlands' biggest AI talents and thus officially an ‘AiNed fellow’, intends to find out. This new grant allows Frenkel to start a team to research the possibilities of neuromorphic computer chips, inspired by the neocortex area in the brain.

TU Delft is organizing the “Learning to Run a Power Network” (L2RPN) competition 2023. L2RPN is a series of competitions designed to train an Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent to operate a power network. The L2RPN Delft 2023 competition offers an exciting and exclusive opportunity for students and researchers in the Netherlands to test their AI solutions against others in a realistic and challenging environment, collaborate with fellow innovators, and win prizes up to €1500.

Developments are rapid around data, algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), especially since the launch of ChatGPT late last year. Software engineering is highly relevant here, because AI systems are essentially made up of software, and also because the two fields influence each other. A conversation about the relationship between AI and software with Geert-Jan Houben, pro-vice rector of AI, Data and Digitalisation, leader of the TU Delft AI Initiative and professor of Web Information Systems, and Arie van Deursen, professor of Software Engineering at TU Delft's Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS).

Building a world wherein solar energy and agriculture can have a mutually beneficial relationship

Electrical power grids worldwide are becoming overloaded. This makes it essential to further develop solutions to ensure the stability of our increasingly sustainable energy system. TU Delft is proud to work at the forefront of renewing energy systems, together with industry partners like grid operator TenneT. During a symposium on the topic of net congestion and innovation, experts from the industry and academia presented their joined efforts in this field.

Violent storms and heavy rains are becoming an increasingly pressing concern in today's world, with climate change posing ever greater risks for society. In the Netherlands alone, it is estimated that extreme weather will result in €745 million in damages per year. Yet, one of the biggest problems with extreme weather events is that we still poorly understand them. Thanks to the new PHARA project, funded by NWO for €3.5 million, this could be set to change. PHARA aims to create a 3D weather radar, which would be the first of its kind to measure the growth process of cloud particles.

A major challenge in the energy transition is the efficient and flexible storage and transportation of renewable energy. Batteries will play an important role in this. However, much research and innovation are still required. In order to encourage this, on Thursday 11 May 2023 TU Delft will be launching e4BatteryDelft: a brand-new platform that will focus on electrochemical storage of renewable energy – with respect for the world around us, in a way that is affordable and also totally European.

Solar energy is the cheapest and most accessible form of energy. Now, it will be more efficient than ever.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science is proud to announce that Professor Peter Palensky has been appointed as the new Head of the Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy. He will start his term on July 1. Peter Palensky brings with him a wealth of experience in the digitalisation of the energy grid: a crucial aspect of the ongoing energy transition.

This spring, the US and UK governments jointly hosted the ‘Summit for Democracy’ – aimed at promoting and protecting democratic values. A part of this summit was the PETs Prize Challenge, designed to develop privacy-enhancing technologies to protect users in our data-driven society whilst also tackling the challenges of that increasingly digital society, such as financial fraud. In this international competition, the team of TU Delft won the second prize, developing the most effective model for detecting financial fraud such as money laundering.

Organized crime is one of the bigger societal challenges of today, especially in ports such as Rotterdam. In order to develop scientifically tried and tested methods to tackle this multi-faceted problem, NWO has funded a new project: FORT-PORT. Led by the Law faculty of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the project will receive critical support from data scientist Huijuan Wang (Department of Intelligent Systems) and mathematician Robbert Fokkink (Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics) at EEMCS. The interdisciplinary and multi-university project will be a first of its kind, and an excellent example of how emerging Digital Technologies can help protect valuable aspects of our society.

How can we make physical jobs more attractive? Can we speed up research on dementia? Can we make our campus an example of sustainability? And will ambitious students succeed in making seaweed aquaculture more sustainable? These four questions are at the heart of the new campaign of Delft University Fund: Tech for Impact 2023.

From suggesting a better topological configuration of the energy grid, to detecting anomalies in the energy trade and suggesting more efficient energy trading strategies: there are countless ways in which AI can help streamline the energy transition. In fact: these are just the first three research directions Jochen Cremer and his team are investigating together with the Austrian Institute of Technology. To find out what other green pastures lie beyond these three approaches, this week TU Delft organized a Hackathon, together with the Austrian AIT.

On March 8 the NWO Domain Board Science has approved nineteen grant applications in the Open Competition Domain Science-M programme, two of which for projects within EEMCS. Sebastijan Dumancic will research how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help scientists with discovering explanations for natural phenomena. Klaus Hildebrandt will work on geometric convolutional neural networks to see how they can help solve difficult problems in surface analysis and processing. Although already existing, these methods are still under development and need to be further developed before they can be widely used in practice.

On 16 February the Netherlands-Flemish Accreditation Organisation (NVAO) accredited the Master's degree in Quantum Information Science & Technology (QIST). With this accreditation, the new programme can officially kick off in September 2023. The Master’s programme is a collaboration between TU Delft (AS, EEMCS and QuTech) and Leiden University.

Record temperatures, floodings and melting sea ice: radical weather events are becoming more frequent and have a devastating effect on our planet and our lives. By accelerating the energy transition and climate action TU Delft, together with its partners, tries to prevent climate change and contain its consequences. With the election of the Best Climate & Energy Paper, TU Delft is highlighting a number of large and small innovations that contribute to this.

Delft AI and ethics researchers lead academic forum of REAIM conference 15 and 16 February.

It shows the shortest path even when 90% of the network is hidden.

At the very end of last year, NWO Open Technology Programme (OTP) announced two new grants in the fields of environmental monitoring and atmospheric threat detection. Both projects are part the department of Microelectronics, and both will help scientists and society better understand our environment – to limit or otherwise mitigate the consequences of climate change.

Today, the NWO announced that it is awarding the ROBUST programme 25 million euros. ROBUST, an initiative from the Innovation Centre for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI), is a collaboration of 51 partners from industry, government, and the knowledge sector, including TU Delft. ROBUST's total budget is over 87 million euros, and with the new impetus from NWO, 17 labs and 170 PhD students will be added in 10 years.

Our thoughts greatly determine how we feel and behave. Thus, gaining insight into certain thought patterns is an important part of preventing and treating depression. TU Delft researcher Franziska Burger investigated how AI can support people with symptoms of depression.

Aad van der Vaart has been elected President Elect of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA). His term will start on January 1, 2023, and a year later he will take over the presidency of the Society.

This week Professor Piet van Mieghem has been elevated to IEEE Fellow, in recognition of his contributions to quality of service-based routing and network modeling.

Researchers of Delft University of Technology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and VSL have developed an alternative positioning system that is more robust and accurate than GPS, especially in urban settings. The working prototype that demonstrated this new mobile network infrastructure achieved an accuracy of 10 centimeter.

Anna Lukina, assistant professor from the faculty of EEMCS, was awarded the annual DEWIS Award – presented personally by Rob Mudde (Vice-Rector Magnificus) during the DEWIS Symposium on November 14.