Delta 2020 annual overview

Many articles over the last year were about Covid-19 and the impact that the virus had on campus life, research and education. It started in February and continued right through to the last few weeks of the year. There was so much news that we started a live blog on two occasions. The only other time that Delta did this was when the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment burned down in 2008.

Never before has our website attracted so many readers as it did in 2020. Corona accounted for much of this, but we did a lot more than only report on corona last year. And we will look at the other stories in this overview. It is a mix of the most read articles and the editorial team’s favourites.

• For example, we wrote about TU Delft alumni and then about Aerospace students, both of which went viral. How did they do this? We suggest reading about the ordinariness test and the music video to find out.
• Or read the story about the student association collector. What kind of things does she have in her collection? A string with an association logo to mention something a little risqué.
• If you want to learn about TU Delft science, then do not miss the thrilling story of the triceratops skull in the Science Centre.
• How are we going to stop using natural gas? Geothermal heat could be one solution. We describe how TU Delft is setting the example.
• And what about building a second coastline as a defence against sea level rise? Delta asked TU Delft scientists for their opinions on this unconventional idea.
• There was also less cheerful science news this year. The pioneering TU Delft scientist Leo Kouwenhoven deemed it necessary to have his own 2018 Nature publication about majorana particles revisited. There were some doubts as to the accuracy of some of the details in the measuring data.
• Our columnists were on a roll in 2020. One column broke the readership record. It was this personal story about racism by Vishal Onkhar.
• Letters to the editor sometimes touched a nerve too. One such letter was this one (in Dutch) by TPM doctoral candidate Britte Bouchaut. She felt moved to defend her colleagues and students at TPM who were mocked in TU Delft memes.
• And finally, we would like to draw attention to this interview with Jan Klein, now a former Professor of Patient Safety Engineering. He discusses how more goes wrong in healthcare than we realise, but that there are suitable solutions.