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Safety on a small ánd large scale

Working with tiny particles, Ruud van Ommen and his research group hope to eventually make an impressively significant impact with their work on water purification. About 750 million people currently have no access to safe drinking water, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. One of the causes in Asia is groundwater contamination due to rapid industrial development. A potential solution: metal oxide-based nanoparticles that can destroy chemical and biological pollutants. “A lot of people around the globe are experimenting with nanotechnology”, says Van Ommen, “but not many can make the transition from small-scale lab findings to large-scale reality.” By combining knowledge of nanomaterials and reactor design, his group hopes to make the difference. But the lofty goal of clean drinking water should not distract from the fact that nanomaterials have also raised safety concerns, as the risks are often unknown or difficult to determine. A reason for Van Ommen to collaborate with TU Delft colleagues campus-wide on further developing the Safe-by-Design approach to engineering. Read more Longer TU Delft Story of Science on this topic Research paper ' Safe-by-design in engineering: An overview and comparative analysis of engineering disciplines ' by Van Ommen and TUD colleagues Download image spread Ruud van Ommen is a full professor in the Chemical Engineering Department of the TU Delft Faculty of Applied Sciences.

IDEE grants for Dr. Bijoy Bera and Dr. Volkert van Steijn to improve retention

The Initiative on Innovation in Delft Engineering Education (IDEE) is a ground-breaking opportunity for scientific staff members to work on university-wide educational challenges. This new programme launched by the TU Delft Teaching Academy will provide grants for theme-based, multidisciplinary research projects aimed at stimulating innovation in engineering education for degree programmes at TU Delft. Bijoy Bera answers some questions: Can you describe the idea behind IDEE? The initiative IDEE came into existence because of Prof. Annoesjka Cabo's vision for a uniform, systematic approach in education innovation at the technical universities of this country. This includes working on specific themes (five, to be precise) where the educator will first carry out scientific research, and subsequently, will implement a 'new' methodology in a classroom. The final goal is to introduce evidence-based, world class innovation at an engineering focussed classroom. On which of the above themes are you going to work? Why is this theme central to the whole IDEE project? Volkert and I will work on the 'Retention' theme of the IDEE project. This theme is fundamental to the whole project, since it is, to begin with, crucial to be aware of how much of the prior expected knowledge has the student retained before embarking on sharing advanced knowledge of that topic. Secondly, many of the innovation projects wrap up their efforts by analyzing the impact of their initiatives and looking at the 'retention' of skills or knowledge from the project is always a solid benchmark for that purpose. What are you going to develop/introduce within this theme? The whole theme 'Retention of Skills & Knowledge' will be investigated/implemented by a team of 8 TU Delft researchers, and consists of three pillars: 'Modeling Cycle', 'Productive Failure', and 'Effective Communication'. Modeling cycle is a major stumbling block in engineering education since it encompasses translating a real-life problem into a mathematical model, and then translating the insight from that mathematical model back into a real-life application. Together with Volkert and Dr. Jeroen Spandaw from the EWI Faculty, I have been working on this for the last couple of years and have introduced several innovative measures in my classrooms to improve the students' grasp of the modeling cycle. Within this IDEE project, we will take a step further, and will design a methodology to investigate the impact of these various innovative measures, with a focus on 'retention'. What is the next step? And how and when will it start? Within this 'Modeling cycle' pillar of the retention theme, we will supervise a PhD and a postdoctoral researcher in the following 5 years. The project has already kicked-off, and we are in the process of finalizing our 'Modeling cycle' team with the PhD and PD candidates. Once that is set, we plan to start by designing some simple experiments to test the retention of knowledge by our students for expected prior knowledge in some of our classroom. Dr. Bijoy Bera Dr.ir. Volkert van Steijn Read more about IDEE

TU Delft scientists put ChatGPT to the test

Researchers at Delft University of Technology and RWTH Aachen University have put ChatGPT’s knowledge on science and engineering to the test. By letting 198 Delft scientists evaluate GPT-3.5’s answers to questions covering natural science and engineering disciplines at the university, they found out how well the large language model can answer university level questions.

Five young TU Delft researchers receive ERC Starting Grant

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the ERC Starting Grants for young researchers. Five of them are scientists from TU Delft. This European grant of €1.5 million for a five-year research programme is intended to enable individual scientists to build their own teams and conduct groundbreaking research.

ERC Starting grant for CO2 recycling in chemical industry

Converting large concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) into products for the chemical industry. That is what Tom Burdyny, recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, wants to achieve. The method that might make this possible is called electrolysis, which creates new chemical bonds by application of electricity.

Graduation ceremony of 500th Engineering Doctorate

The Faculty of Applied Sciences celebrated the 500th Engineering Doctorate (EngD) conferral during a milestone graduation ceremony on 9 June 2023. Fourteen new Applied Sciences EngDs graduates successfully finished their design-traineeships. Together with all predecessors, a total of 512 EngD graduates have obtained their degree since 1991.

Events

December

05

e-Refinery lunch lecture | Theoretical studies of the mechanism of C1 and C2 product formation in CO2 electrochemical reduction

     

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