Queen Máxima and European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel on campus     Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, and Queen Máxima visited The Green Village together on Wednesday, a living lab where innovation helps transform the living environment. They were also given a tour of the labs of the Bionanoscience department of…

A car that weighs less than its driver     A car that at 67 kilograms is lighter than the average driver? On Monday, May 16, the students of Eco-Runner Team Delft unveiled their new car. With their Eco-Runner XII, the young engineers are competing in the Shell Eco-marathon, an international competition all about fuel-efficient…

Judge bans 4,000 new student homes in Amstelveen     The construction of new student housing in the vicinity of Schiphol Airport violates the aviation law, according to the Council of State. So plans for large-scale new housing next to the Uilenstede student campus are cancelled.   In the vacant Kronenburg office district, right next…

‘International students worth 1.5 billion a year’     Most international students leave when they graduate, but almost one in four still lives here five years later. After deducting costs, these highly educated people provide the treasury with 1.5 billion euro per year. This is evident from research conducted by internationalisation organisation Nuffic into the…

Conflict of interest at Leiden University     Leiden University has concealed the fact that the Dutch Tax Authority pays for a professor who researches the feasibility of tax legislation. Since 2015 the Tax Authorities pay most of the costs of the Leiden chair ‘Social and historical context of tax law’, reported the television programme…

Water lab tests floating tunnel     Niels Ruiter. (Photo: Jos Wassink) Niels Ruiter, master student of Hydraulic Engineering, is working on a 1:50 model of a floating tunnel in one of the flumes of the Waterlab. In early March, Dr Pengxu Zou obtained his doctorate with a thesis on the optimal shape of the…

Lecturers protest against temporary contracts     On 12 May, several dozen lecturers protested against the many temporary contracts at Dutch universities. They demonstrated in Utrecht to put pressure on the collective labour agreement (CAO) negotiations. For years trade unions and action groups have been resisting the ‘flex culture’ at universities increasingly fiercely. Many lecturers and…

Master admission requirements eased again     In the next academic year, universities and universities of applied sciences will again be allowed to admit master’s students who, because of the corona measures, do not yet have the right diploma. They may conditionally admit bachelor’s and transition students to master’s programmes. The institutions themselves may determine when…

EU: EUR 25 million for Ukrainian scientists     Refugee scientists from Ukraine can continue their research in neighbouring European countries. The European Commission has allocated EUR 25 million for them in the Horizon Europe research programme.   The Commission announced this decision on 10 May. The EUR 25 million falls under an innovation programme…

No mandatory disclosure for universities     The Cabinet does not want to institute mandatory disclosure for universities and companies working with Chinese entities in risk areas. This emerged from answers to Parliamentary Questions (in Dutch) posed by House of Representatives members Sjoerd Sjoerdsma and Alexander Hammelburg (both of the D66 party) after an article appeared…