Research News

A team of researchers at TU Delft, in cooperation with eight European partners from Croatia, France, Germany, and Romania are working on the development of autonomous robots for underwater littler collection.

The research programme ‘Towards Safe Mobility for All: A Data-Driven Approach’ has been awarded a grant by NWO to conduct interdisciplinary research on human behaviour during transitions. The coordinator is Joost de Winter, researcher at the Department of Cognitive Robotics and expert in the area of human-machine interaction and car driving.

They are a beautiful sight, those cumulus clouds drifting by slowly high above our heads. But what is propelling them? And how do they affect the wind? To find out Louise Nuijens spent a few days with her head in the clouds. Literally.

In the next few decades, the worldwide demand for food is set to double. Africa and South-America will be the main producers of the extra food. But how can large-scale agriculture be achieved if there are no reliable data on the availability of water, when the rain is going to fall, and where? Professor Nick van de Giesen is looking for answers and data.

NWO has granted the research proposal “On the Move: Transition towards Sustainable Mobility”. This is a joint project of Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and TU Delft. In collaboration with public stakeholders and private companies, this project develops and tests an innovative approach that systematically deals with uncertainties in a mobility system that needs to become more sustainable.

On 29 January Kornelis Blok took over the role as Chair for the Delft Energy Initiative (DEI). Rector Magnificus Tim van der Hagen applauded Paulien Herder for her achievements as Chair for the last 6.5 years. DEI will forward here work with 4 main energy pillars and has chosen 4 new themes to help them grow.

What if a robot shuts down during an operation? How long do you sleep every night? What kind of a suit is that you’re wearing? And what’s your biggest dream? A group of ten to twelve-year-old students from different primary schools in Delft listened with rapt attention to ‘their guest lecturer’, which was followed by a barrage of questions. 3mE-professors Jenny Dankelman, Paul Breedveld, Just Herder and Maarten van der Elst each visited a primary school class in the context of the unique ‘Meet the professor’ event and introduced mechanical engineering in a special way to the students.

In a candid article, Carey Walters, our 'fracture and damage’ specialist, tells us how his career has developed until now and about the difference between working as a scientist here in the Netherlands and in the United States.

Angelo Accardo, expert in the area of Soft Micro- and Nano-system Technology for Life Sciences and Biology, received the TU Delft Health Initiative Pilot award. His pilot project will be about his research on the creation of standardized, reproducible and physiologically relevant 3D engineered cell microenvironments (3D Onco-Scaffolds) to be used as a benchmark tool for proton Radiobiology.

As a result of stricter environment regulation, ships will have to use renewable fuels more frequently in the future instead of diesel. This means that the familiar ship diesel engines will be gradually replaced by new technologies, such as gas engines and fuel cells. Often these systems have already been tested on land, but are they also safe for use in the open sea? To find answers to these questions, research Arthur Vrijdag and PhD candidate Lode Huijgens, who work at the Department of Maritime and Transport Technology (MTT), developed a globally unique Propeller Open Water (POW) setup.

For large scale introduction of electric cars it is important to develop safer batteries with more capacity compared to the current Li-ion batteries.

Sovereignty4Europe, an interdisciplinary research project that aims to start an online community of 50,000 internet users to evaluate the principles of an ‘internet of trust’, has received €3.3 million of research funding.

The new consortium IEBB stands for integrated energy transition for existing buildings and has received a 13,8 million euro grant to develop affordable and user-friendly renovation concepts in the coming years. Researchers from the faculties of Architecture and the Built Environment, Industrial Design Engineering and Applied Sciences at TU Delft are developing the necessary knowledge for, amongst others, innovative renovation concepts, digitisation of the renovation process, optimisation of heat pumps and energy performance of buildings, chain innovation and implementation.

Researchers at QuTech, a collaboration of TU Delft and TNO, have developed a new magnetic quantum sensing technology that can image samples with atomic-scale resolution.