Archive

It looks like an old-fashioned steamboat with two tall chimneys. In reality, the 154-meter-long cargo ship SC Connector - with modern wind-powered propulsion - sails into the port of Rotterdam. "An important development."

Twenty-five companies and knowledge institutes in the maritime industry have joined forces in SH2IPDRIVE: Sustainable Hydrogen Integrated Propulsion Drives. In this innovation programme, they will work together to make hydrogen shipping a reality.

How can humans instantly estimate the slipperiness of a surface and adjust their gripping, for instance when picking up a wet glass? Researchers have demonstrated that a (radial) strain of the skin of the fingertip is involved in the perception of slipperiness during initial contact. Robotics could use this information, for instance to improve prosthetics and grippers. The results will be published in PNAS.

Mudnet, the Delft-based multidisciplinary team consisting of marine and civil engineers researching the properties of mud, won the NWO ‘Team Science Award’ this week. The team was praised for using a great diversity of expertise in subject.

Researchers from TU Delft developed a method to watch the formation of kidney stones on a microscale, in a so called microfluidic platform. By slightly adjusting the pH and the concentration of specific minerals, the formation could be slowed down or inhibited completely. The research is now published in Biomicrofluidics.

A team of researchers from TU Delft managed to design one of the world’s most precise microchip sensors; the device can function at room temperature – a ‘holy grail’ for quantum technologies and sensing.

In her research project ‘MechanoPore’ Sabina Caneva works on the development of programmable, shape-shifting DNA origami nanovalves for size-selective delivery of biomolecules across cell membranes. The NWO Domain Board Science has awarded Caneva for her research in the Open Competition Domain Science-XS.

TU Delft Master's students of Technical Medicine, under the supervision of Prof. Jaap Harlaar, want to develop a simple and relatively inexpensive ventilator as soon as possible.

Current membrane fabrication processes are not sustainable because they are energy-intensive and require hazardous solvents. We are all familiar with the concept of 3D printing as it has been used in various fields in the last decades. However, it couldn’t find its contribution yet to the big industry of polymeric membrane production. Hanieh Bazyar, Department of Process and Energy, received NWO Open Competition Grant for her research on next generation 3D printed separation membranes.

How do you install a wind turbine far out at sea when high waves and strong winds make its installation virtually impossible? With this question in mind, a team of researchers from TU Delft, in collaboration with Heerema Marine Contractors (HMC) and DOT B.V., boarded the world's largest crane vessel this week: Heerema's Sleipnir. As part of a major pioneering project, the FOX project, they are exploring floating wind turbine installation.

In Dutch hospitals, over a million kilos of blue ‘wrapping paper’ is used each year to keep medical instruments sterile. After they have been used, they create an enormous mountain of waste. Researchers Tim Horeman and Bart van Straten devised a method to melt down this blue polypropylene wrapping paper and turn it into a new medical device.

Sebastien Callens, (former) researcher at the Department of BioMechanical Engineering in the field of biomaterials and bone implants, has received a Rubicon grant for a research stay abroad. He will be conducting research on bone mineralisation at Imperial College London. Callens is one of the 24 researchers who has received this grant from NWO.

Temitope Agbana, PostDoc researcher at the Delft Center for Systems and Control department, together with a team of researchers, designed the Schistoscope; a smart method for early and easy detection of Bilharzia, a deadly tropical disease.

Robotic body-weight support (BWS) devices can play a key role in helping people with neurological disorders to improve their walking. The team that developed the advanced body-weight support device RYSEN in 2018 has since gained more fundamental insight in BWS but also concludes that improvement in this field is necessary.

Making a significant contribution to creating opportunities for a CO2-free energy system, this is what 150 representatives from the business community, knowledge institutions and government are working on within the Dutch AI Coalition. The Energy and Sustainability working group collaborated on the position paper 'AI as an accelerator of the energy transition', which sets out the opportunities for a CO2-free energy system. Researchers from TU Delft have made an active contribution to this agenda.

At the request of medical professionals, researchers at TU Delft developed a test method to check whether imported face masks met the safety requirements. And that was necessary, as it turns out, because in total only one-third of the 140 million face masks tested in 19 hospitals passed the safety test.

Every trace or other piece of evidence at a crime scene has to be thoroughly examined. Traces that cannot be taken away or stored, such as blood spatters, is visualised with a ruler to indicate its size. TU Delft and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) have developed a new method for the police that will soon make the ruler obsolete and make it easier to measure all kinds of forensic evidence.

Angelo Accardo, assistant professor at the Department of Precision and Microsystems Engineering (PME), has been awarded two NWO Open Competition Grants to address this need by developing 3D engineered cell micro-environments using light-assisted fabrication techniques.

‘I don’t give instruction, I give feedback,’ says Peter Wellens. He has been elected best lecturer for the academic year 2020-2021 at the 3mE Faculty.

All students from the 3mE Faculty had the opportunity to vote for the best lecturer of the academic year 2020-2021. This award allows them show their appreciation for these lecturers’ unique and creative teaching styles.