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Limit the number of PhD candidates per supervisor, otherwise you create profkippen: academics with so many PhD candidates under their wings that they no longer have enough time for beginning researchers. This is the recommendation made on Tuesday by the Young Academy (De Jonge Akademie).
PhD candidates at TU Delft sometimes have to wait so long for their defense that their visas expire or job applications are jeopardized. A simplified PhD ceremony and the addition of an extra beadle — both negotiated by the Works Council — are expected to ease the pressure. And not a moment too soon, because the real wave of PhD defenses is still to come.
What happens when you have to dodge a robot instead of a human? At Highlight Festival, TU Delft postdocs Olger Siebinga (Mechanical Engineering) and Wilbert Tabone (Industrial Design Engineering) will conduct live research into how humans and robots can share the same space without collisions.
On Monday morning 9 February, trains between The Hague and Delft were cancelled and traffic lights were not working due to a power outage. Is this an isolated incident or a sign of an increasingly vulnerable electricity grid? Power grid professor Peter Palensky: “Overall, the infrastructure is improving.”
The shipping industry needs to be less polluting and even become emission free. How can this be achieved at a time where everyone orders everything from Temu? By falling back on the wind. Researchers are testing the aerodynamics of a cargo ship in a wind tunnel to determine the best place to position rotor sails.
Humans will soon be heading back to the moon, but the launch of Artemis II, which was planned for this week, has been postponed until March due to technical problems. What makes this launch unique and why is launching so difficult? Five questions for Sebastien Welters from student rocket association DARE.
Japan joined Horizon in January, the European research programme that distributes billions of euros in funding. It is the latest non-European country to have joined in recent years. “Science is being used as soft power.”
Make the amount of time used for teaching measurable; monitor PhD candidates better during their doctoral programme; and, reserve enough time for supervision. These are the recommendations of PhD candidates and their representatives in the face of faculties’ austerity plans.
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