What do you do when your solar cells are already so efficient that further development runs up against a limit? Stop? Or devise a new route? At the Photovoltaics Materials and Devices research group (Faculty of EEMCS), they chose option two. Professor of solar cells Olindo Isabella: “What if you stack two innovative cells on top of each other?”
One in three full professors is now a woman, except at TU Delft, TU Eindhoven and the Twente University. However, the increase in the number of women seems to be stagnating among assistant professors and associate professors.
To protect academic freedom, universities should become more democratic. This emerged as the central theme at a national conference on the subject, in which all universities took part.
The first European conference on research security, organised by universities, attracted 480 participants to TU. During ENCORS, the focus was not only on practical knowledge exchange between universities, but also on what the shifting political direction in the United States means for international scientific cooperation.
Clean water from the tap? That is becoming less and less a given, according to the report Caring for Water (Zorg voor Water) by the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure. Water expert Professor Jan Peter van der Hoek explains what we can do about it: “Smart innovation can help, but tackling pollution yields the best results.”
The European Research Council (ERC) wanted to reduce the workload of reviewers by introducing stricter rules for grant applications. Following strong criticism, those plans have now largely been dropped.
“There has to be a more efficient way,” Surya Prakash thought while cooking in his dorm room. Ten years later, his efficient ultra hot frying pan is used by a Michelin star chef.
Have you ever wondered whether bacteria produce sound? Researchers from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering have built tiny graphene trampolines to listen to bacteria. What do these organisms sound like? And what’s the point?
Countries in Central and Eastern Europe are becoming increasingly successful in applying for European research grants. Nevertheless, the gap with the Netherlands and the rest of the EU remains large. “We are losing an enormous amount of talent.”
