The number of women professors at TU Delft remains far below the national average and its own target, even though five years ago that target was considered realistic. What went wrong and how can things be improved? Delta discussed this with Vice-Rector Hans Hellendoorn and Acting Chief Diversity Officer Cynthia Liem.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded forty scientists from Dutch research institutions a ‘consolidator grant’ of around €2 million. Five of them are affiliated with TU Delft.

Universities of applied sciences have signed up for cooperation with the armed forces. Universities are still working on an agreement. And TU Delft? It signed a letter of intent with the Ministry of Defense in April.

Three in ten professors at Dutch universities are women, according to newly released figures for 2024. TU Delft remains at the bottom of the list and is the only university to see a decline. This means that the target of 25 percent female professors by 2025 now seems definitively out of reach.

For many people, Venus is nothing more than a bright dot in the sky. But not for geochemist and experimental petrologist Edgar Steenstra. He wants to understand how the channels on Venus that are thousands of kilometers long were formed. And since this month, TU Delft has the equipment needed to investigate this.

TU Delft has withdrawn from a research collaboration on artificial intelligence. ‘Delft Student Intifada’ is protesting on 3 December partly against this partnership, because the Israeli company Weebit Nano was involved. Three other collaborations will not go ahead.

News from China: an experimental molten salt reactor is said to have run on thorium for the first time. This type of technology is also being developed in Delft. Last week, an agreement was presented for the construction of Europe’s first pilot plant. Nuclear physicist Martin Rohde: “The thorium reactor is the holy grail.”

In order to become more independent from American big tech companies, SURF is investigating the possibilities offered by the European NextCloud. An initial successful trial is being scaled up: from a few dozen to two thousand users.

The first snow of the year has fallen. Is that early, or late? What do we actually know about snow? The KNMI (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) longs for new data on snowflakes. And that is exactly what researcher Nina Maherndl will deliver.

Last weekend, AE alumnus Michiel Kruijff won the audience award at the Wubbo Ockels Innovation Awards with his idea for an aluminium battery. The awards are named after Delft sustainability professor and astronaut Wubbo Ockels, who exactly forty years ago became the first Dutchman to travel into space.