Bikers beware Due to Prince Bernhard’s funeral in Delft, parking cars on the TU campus is prohibited on Friday night and Saturday morning.
The campus remains open for bicyclists and pedestrians. Bicyclists however are warned: Starting from Friday morning at 9 a.m., municipality workers will remove all bicycles at Delft central train station that aren’t parked in the bicycle racks, as well as those along the funeral procession route: Noordeinde, Oude Delft, Nieuwstraat and the Markt.
Winners I
An ‘idea competition’ for the design of the material sciences laboratory of the Mechanical Engineering & Maritime Technology Faculty has been won by TU architecture graduates Joep Janssen and Bart Cosijn. The pair won the 5,000-euro prize plus a contract for a preliminary design of the laboratory. The concept of their winning design was called, ‘Space from inside a case’, and featured a ‘space cabin’ as a symbol of the space for the work place. The jury however received only two designs for consideration.
Winners II
The TU’s academic group ‘Design and construction of composite structures’ (L&R) has won, as part of a team including four other universities, the Descartes Prize for scientific communication. The team won the prize for their ‘compositions on tour’, a mobile road show which in the summer of 2002 brought approximately 30,000 tourists in 40 cities and eight countries in contact with the compositions. The TU was part of a team that included the universities of Leuven, Naples, and Liverpool, as well as two design studios in Gent, Belgium. The prize was worth 50,000 euro, which TU instructor Coen Vermeeren says will be invested in the next mobile composition, scheduled for 2006.
www.cordis.lu/descartes
Super Light Car
In January, car companies Audi and Volkswagen, and the TU’s department of resource engineering technology will start developing a lightweight car, called the ‘Super Light Car’. PhD student Antoinette van Schaik will graduate this week based on her model for a total recycling process for cars. With her model, Van Schaik can predict what percentage of a junk car can be converted into reusable material. In the coming three years she will, together with a group of car manufactures, including Volkswagen and Audi, develop the results of her research in the Super Light Car project. This lightweight eco-car will be tested based on its recyclability. This new car may not weigh more than 400kg and must last for at least ten years. The European Union is sponsoring the Super Light Car project. Van Schaik’s research is important because as of 2006, new government standards stipulate that 85 percent of a car must be recyclable. “But actually the standard is too rigid,” Van Schaik says. “We must add to this a statistical margin of error.”
Ethics
Ramesh Chidambaram, a student from India at the Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science Faculty, has won the 2004 Mekelprijs for his essay on the ethical dilemmas which engineers are faced with. In very elegant prose, Chidambaram shows that in real life, rules of ethical conduct are often nothing more than a piece of paper: the pressures of competition, company loyalty and fast-developing technologies make it very tempting to sidestep the rules. And small, innovative companies are also vulnerable because they are so dependent on the money of investors. Consequently, ethics almost seem like a luxury the engineer can’t afford, as Chidambaram puts it. He doesn’t want to succumb to pessimism, though, and after this harsh diagnosis proposes some possible remedies. The teaching of ethics should be given a more prominent role in higher education, because research shows that it really has an influence on the conduct of the engineers of tomorrow. It’s also essential that the top executives show that they consider ethics to be imperative for the success of their company . in deeds, not just in words.
Bikers beware
Due to Prince Bernhard’s funeral in Delft, parking cars on the TU campus is prohibited on Friday night and Saturday morning. The campus remains open for bicyclists and pedestrians. Bicyclists however are warned: Starting from Friday morning at 9 a.m., municipality workers will remove all bicycles at Delft central train station that aren’t parked in the bicycle racks, as well as those along the funeral procession route: Noordeinde, Oude Delft, Nieuwstraat and the Markt.
Winners I
An ‘idea competition’ for the design of the material sciences laboratory of the Mechanical Engineering & Maritime Technology Faculty has been won by TU architecture graduates Joep Janssen and Bart Cosijn. The pair won the 5,000-euro prize plus a contract for a preliminary design of the laboratory. The concept of their winning design was called, ‘Space from inside a case’, and featured a ‘space cabin’ as a symbol of the space for the work place. The jury however received only two designs for consideration.
Winners II
The TU’s academic group ‘Design and construction of composite structures’ (L&R) has won, as part of a team including four other universities, the Descartes Prize for scientific communication. The team won the prize for their ‘compositions on tour’, a mobile road show which in the summer of 2002 brought approximately 30,000 tourists in 40 cities and eight countries in contact with the compositions. The TU was part of a team that included the universities of Leuven, Naples, and Liverpool, as well as two design studios in Gent, Belgium. The prize was worth 50,000 euro, which TU instructor Coen Vermeeren says will be invested in the next mobile composition, scheduled for 2006.
www.cordis.lu/descartes
Super Light Car
In January, car companies Audi and Volkswagen, and the TU’s department of resource engineering technology will start developing a lightweight car, called the ‘Super Light Car’. PhD student Antoinette van Schaik will graduate this week based on her model for a total recycling process for cars. With her model, Van Schaik can predict what percentage of a junk car can be converted into reusable material. In the coming three years she will, together with a group of car manufactures, including Volkswagen and Audi, develop the results of her research in the Super Light Car project. This lightweight eco-car will be tested based on its recyclability. This new car may not weigh more than 400kg and must last for at least ten years. The European Union is sponsoring the Super Light Car project. Van Schaik’s research is important because as of 2006, new government standards stipulate that 85 percent of a car must be recyclable. “But actually the standard is too rigid,” Van Schaik says. “We must add to this a statistical margin of error.”
Ethics
Ramesh Chidambaram, a student from India at the Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science Faculty, has won the 2004 Mekelprijs for his essay on the ethical dilemmas which engineers are faced with. In very elegant prose, Chidambaram shows that in real life, rules of ethical conduct are often nothing more than a piece of paper: the pressures of competition, company loyalty and fast-developing technologies make it very tempting to sidestep the rules. And small, innovative companies are also vulnerable because they are so dependent on the money of investors. Consequently, ethics almost seem like a luxury the engineer can’t afford, as Chidambaram puts it. He doesn’t want to succumb to pessimism, though, and after this harsh diagnosis proposes some possible remedies. The teaching of ethics should be given a more prominent role in higher education, because research shows that it really has an influence on the conduct of the engineers of tomorrow. It’s also essential that the top executives show that they consider ethics to be imperative for the success of their company . in deeds, not just in words.
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