Stories Social skills for digital humans If anything, the Covid pandemic taught us that real-life interactions couldn’t be replaced by digital ones. This is just one of the reasons why Chirag Raman, assistant professor in the Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics group, wants digital agents or avatars to interact with humans in a more seamless and lifelike manner. Using artificial intelligence and knowledge of human behaviour, he is teaching machines to understand and deploy human-like social intelligence – verbally, vocally and visually. At the horizon are technologies for a wide range of applications, from distance learning and e-healthcare to immersive games. Supercharged sustainability: designing circular solar panels The materials our earth supplies are not infinite. In fact, certain widely used materials are very scarce, with only a few countries able to source and process them – creating a dependency for other countries. These are called Critical Raw Materials. Coincidentally, these materials are used extensively in sustainable technologies. Silicon metal, for example, is used for solar panels. Researcher Malte Vogt wants to protect sustainable technologies from running out of resources: "I design circular solar panels. The goal is to mine the materials only once and use them to build first-generation solar panels for the energy transition and re-use the same materials again and again." Engineering the evolution of the Internet Many of us don’t realise that the internet is under great pressure. This network of networks is becoming increasingly complex, almost to the point of being unworkable. Human configuration errors are causing more and more major disruptions – far more than even those caused by hackers, for example. Added to that is the pressure of climate change, and extreme weather that can damage networks. The answer lies in making the internet more flexible and robust. Fernando Kuipers, Professor of Internet Science, sees part of the solution coming from a self-regulating internet, in which artificial intelligence (AI) determines the network’s configuration and evolution. The coming age of ‘solar everywhere’ From image recognition to medical diagnostics, Machine Learning has a huge impact. Yet Elvin Isufi adds an extra dimension, enabling its analyzing power to complex networks such as recommender systems, and more down-to-earth: water management. Deep learning for complex networks From image recognition to medical diagnostics, Machine Learning has a huge impact. Yet Elvin Isufi adds an extra dimension, enabling its analyzing power to complex networks such as recommender systems, and more down-to-earth: water management. Neural networks put the afterburners on skin recovery models First aid for burn injuries is to cool the area for twenty minutes with lukewarm running water. Math can play an important role in choosing the subsequent, often more intensive, treatment aimed at reducing the probability of permanent damage or even disabilities. But these mathematical models for skin recovery must be fast. By applying neural networks, Marianne Schaaphok increased their speed by more than a million times. Aad van der Vaart: academic globetrotter touches down in Delft The academic globetrotter Aad van der Vaart will be working in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science to raise the concept of causality – research into cause and effect – to a higher level. A giant pink rabbit on Grote Markt A 7 metre tall pink origami rabbit has hopped its way over to the Grote Markt, making Delft’s living room its temporary hutch from May 30. The animal was designed with the Delft Fringe Festival in mind by two TU Delft computer science students. ‘We were positively shocked when we heard that we, two computer science students, had come up with the winner,’ Bartek Kotlicki from Poland and Irishman Ben Provan-Bessell said. Filling the gap: terahertz waves for next generation sensing and communication Developing technology for the terahertz region of the electromagnetic spectrum used to be only pursued by space exploration scientists and the military. Maria Alonso-delPino uses advances in silicon chip technology to open up a whole universe of more worldly applications. Taming the software jungle with evolutionary insights Just like your television or car, software nowadays is often assembled from hundreds of pre-built components – ready-to-use pieces of code created and maintained by companies, volunteer teams and sometimes even individuals. It gives rise to some very interesting dynamics, much like in a natural ecosystem. It’s an analogy professor Diomidis Spinellis wants to explore in his quest to help tame the ever-increasing complexity of software. Living on the edge Rajendra Bishnoi works on novel technological concepts for so-called edge devices and he inspires students to follow his example. ‘Conventional computing platforms will start using too much energy soon. We need to look for more energy-efficient alternatives.’ A fighter jet and your health, radar can track both Any kind of sensing, human or not, unveils similarities. Ice and metal may both feel cold. The sun and an apple may both appear to be red. For Francesco Fioranelli, specialised in using radar technology for the classification of objects, there is little difference between a fighter jet manoeuvring at tens of kilometres distance, or an elderly person staggering through a room. An algorithm for the perfect photograph The rise of smartphones has made photography accessible to everyone, but this has not necessarily resulted in better photographs, as a quick look on Instagram or Facebook can confirm: there is a huge difference between being able to take photographs and being a good photographer. But what if this difference was eliminated? Thomas Saulou at TU Delft is working on software that can make this possible. City of the future communicates using solar panels If it is up to Patrizio Manganiello, the city of the future will not only run on solar energy, but we will also use the solar infrastructure for lightning-fast communication. The new field of research called Photovoltatronics is bringing this future closer. Dreaming of the quantum computer Doing incredibly fast calculations to develop even better new medicines. That is just one of the things that will be possible in the future thanks to a quantum computer. It’s the dream of Fabio Sebastiano from the Faculty of EEMCS and QuTech (a partnership between TU Delft and TNO). He is devising solutions to make this device a reality. Improving the effectiveness of speech recognition How can you ensure that a computer understands exactly what someone is saying even if they cannot speak the language perfectly? In her quest to make this possible, Odette Scharenborg (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Studies) is researching automatic speech recognition. ‘Rapid development of LEDs offers all kinds of medical potential’ You can use ultraviolet light from LEDs to combat coronavirus. But it’s not as simple as commercial providers are presenting it right now, concludes Professor Guoqi Zhang. On the need for a sound scientific basis and the potential for LEDs in medical applications. Firm ground for cloud datacentre planning Just like the roads that provide access to them and the dikes that protect them, cloud datacentres have become an essential part of our national, and worldwide, infrastructure. Thanks to capacity planning research by TU Delft master’s student Georgios Andreadis, these datacentres may continue to meet the ever-growing computational demands while reducing their operational costs and increasing their efficiency and environmental sustainability. 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. New sensor chips: low-cost, smart and efficient Imagine using a chip to analyse heart cells, or being notified by a smart plaster if your heart rate gets too high. These are two examples of research that Frans Widdershoven is working on. This fresh new pro-fessor is developing new smart sensors. You are on page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Share this page: Facebook Linkedin Twitter Email WhatsApp Share this page