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Giang Tran

Assistant professor, section Economics of Technology & Innovation (ETI)

Sounds good: treating depression with ultrasound

Tiago Costa is developing a novel targeted neuro-modulation treatment for depression, using focused ultrasound. His goal is to treat only brain areas that need attention, leaving other parts of the brain undisturbed.

Feeling the digital

Have you ever wondered what the fabric feels like on a jumper you were thinking to order online? Or wanted to touch the hand of your distant relatives through your computer screen? Assistant professor Yasemin Vardar knows exactly how you feel. For years, we’ve been able to send and receive digital packets. But we can’t do that for ‘touch’. In 2020, she founded the Haptic Interface Technology Lab to change that.

Adding social awareness to conversational agents

Conversational AI right now almost entirely lacks an ability that’s natural to us humans. It can’t yet tune in to the subtleties of how something is being said and adapt a response to fit. Catharine Oertel from the Interactive Intelligence Group develops conversational agents that are socially aware, allowing them to engage with people in a much more human-like manner

New, biology-inspired robot brain

Biology is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for robotics. Whether it involves walking, grabbing, flying or swimming, robotics looks with amazement and interest at the rich variety of solutions that evolution has developed. Not that robotics blindly copies nature, but it does take what it can to use in its mechanical robots. An efficient way of letting a robot’s hand grab a delicate bell pepper, for example. Or an energy-efficient way of letting a robot walk on two legs.

Feminist AI: transforming and challenging the current Artificial Intelligence (AI) Industry

As a discipline and as a practice, data science has historically been led by a narrow cohort of people, representing a homogeneous demographic. This lack of diversity has contributed to the (often unconscious) perpetration of biases and stereotypes, which pose significant risks to society. Increasing diversity in data science not only mitigates these risks, but also fosters creativity and produces better outcomes.

Feminist AI offers a new perspective on the AI industry by challenging the notion that AI design, development, and deployment should be guided by – and should mainly benefit, a limited group of individuals, predominantly from Western male backgrounds. Sara Colombo, who leads the Feminist Generative AI Lab at TU Delft, advocates for other voices in data science and AI. “Only by making other voices heard can we ensure a more fair and equitable development of data science and AI, and the products and services that are built on them.”

Protecting a Sustainable Future

If you want to know more about the research of Thomas Höllt, you could simply have a look at his work. It should – for the trained eye – speak for itself. And what you will see, will vary from the dispersion of proteins in cells, to the different layers in an old Vermeer painting. His visualization platform does not only help biologists to understand how the immune system works, it also helps them to get to the roots of diseases and come up with specialized treatment. And it can also be used to identify and chart invaluable paintings and could have many more applications.

Robot and humans have to understand each other

The smarter robots become, the more we will encounter them – at home, in the streets, in shops and in the workplace – and the more they will interact directly with humans. When that happens, robots will have to get wise to human behaviour, learn to work and communicate with people, and even learn from them. The opposite is true as well. Humans will need to have an idea of what robots are going to do, what they’re not going to do, what they can do and what they cannot do. Robots and humans are going to have to understand each other’s conduct.

Self-driving cars begin to understand road users’ behaviour

Drive around a busy Dutch city centre one day and observe everything that happens around you. As a driver, you have to constantly make choices. Does the pedestrian, who is suddenly crossing the road, see you? Will that van give you right of way? What is the mother with a child on the back of her bike planning to do? And then there’s the weather. You can be blinded by the sun. You see less in the shade and in the dark. The road could be slippery, or it could start to rain really hard. We’re usually unaware of how many intelligent decisions we make while driving, and the difficult conditions that we make them in.