Research News

Tamás Keviczky appointed full professor Networked Cyber-Physical Systems. Tamás Keviczky joined the Delft Center for Systems and Control in 2007 and has worked there as an associate professor since 2015.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a reflection on our society and shows us just how vulnerable we are, despite all the advanced mathematical models that are supposed to make policy- and decision-makers aware of the potential risks associated with a pandemic. ‘Yet,’ write scientists Pasquale Cirillo (TU Delft) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (New York University) in their recently published paper in Nature Physics, ‘most of these models do not look at the tail risk of infectious diseases, and there is very little questioning of the reliability of the various parameters.’ According to the scientists, extreme value theory (EVT) offers a solution for modelling the actual risks of a pandemic.

This afternoon (Friday 29 May 2020) a unique AIRPORT TECHNOLOGY LAB (ATL) will open at Rotterdam The Haque Airport.

Due to the restrictive corona measures, the design project of the first-year Mechanical Engineering looks very different this year. What if you are no longer allowed to get together and work, and if you can’t build and test a design in the workshop?

We deeply regret to inform you that two students from our faculty were involved in the tragic surfing accident on Monday 11 May in Scheveningen.

This Wednesday May 6th, Tepitome ‘Tope’ Agbana successfully defended his PhD on ‘Smart Optics Against Smart Parasites’, at Delft University of Technology (3ME faculty). The defence took place at the Senate room of the Aula while four other committee members joined via Skype . Agbana’s research concerns the early detection of malaria, which is the leading cause of death among pregnant women and young children: 11% of maternal and 20% of under–five deaths are attributed to malaria every year.

For patients hospitalised with COVID-19, the battle is not just a physical fight against the virus, it’s a psychological struggle against isolation. Witnessing the impact of isolation on coronavirus patients, the Renier de Graaf Hospital in Delft reached out to scientists at Delft University of Technology to ask for help in developing an easy-to-use and secure communications platform.

In a very short period of time, students involved in OperationAIR have successfully developed an emergency ventilator for coronavirus patients. Following the necessary test procedures, the design of the AIRone – including all related documentation – has now been released online so that other countries and initiatives can also benefit from it.

Kornelis Blok and Jaco Quist will be working with the Technical University of Bandung in a broader consortium to do research on the renewable energy transition in Indonesia. The project is funded by NWO and the Indonesian research council. In the project, TU Delft will be focusing on making participatory renewable energy scenarios, implementation pathways and techno-economic assessment of renewable energy sources. One PhD candidate and one postdoc will be hired. Colleagues from the CEG faculty will also participate in the project.

The shortages of personal protective equipment are increasing the pressure on the healthcare system in the fight against COVID-19. In collaboration with Pieter van der Staay, FLEX/design, Delmic, Star-shl diagnostic centres and Scala Scientific, a team of TU Delft students have developed a smart shielding wall that relieves care providers of time-consuming and complicated cleaning protocols.

The researchers of Project Inspiration have made all of the designs for their mechanical ventilator available worldwide. In this way, the team hope to reduce the shortage of ventilators in the Netherlands and abroad. In addition, a test model has been prepared, and it will soon be sent to Guatemala.

Scientific research into the world-famous painting by Johannes Vermeer, known as the 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', has yielded new insights. TU Delft researchers played an important role in making discoveries about the brushwork, the use of pigments and how Vermeer built up his painting with various layers of paint.

In the early morning of 22 April 2020, our dear former colleague professor Barend Thijsse passed away after a short illness as a result of lung cancer. Barend was 69 years old.

QuTech, a collaboration between TU Delft and TNO, has managed to control qubits in silicon at temperatures over 50 times higher than previously. The increase to practical temperatures represents a crucial leap towards a functional quantum computer. Qubits are the building blocks of a future quantum computer and operating at a higher temperature opens up the possibility of integrating both qubits and their controlling electronics onto one standard chip. The researchers published their findings in Nature today.

Today, a team of Delft researchers and students from the BioMechanical Engineering department is launching a new type of ventilator that is purely mechanical and which you could easily construct and repair yourself. The team borrowed a 1960s ventilator from Rijksmuseum Boerhaave and used it as inspiration. As it works mechanically, no electronics are required. This is particularly advantageous since its production is not dependent on the – now uncertain – supply of parts from China.