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Climate Action Programme lecture "Harnessing the elements for a sustainable future"

Climate Action Programme lecture "Harnessing the elements for a sustainable future" 13 February 2025 12:45 till 13:45 - Location: TU Delft tbd | Add to my calendar Date: Thursday 13 February 2025 Time: 12:45 - 13:45 (free vegan lunch from 12:15 if registered) Location: TU Delft; TBD Moderator: Registration: is mandatory via this link "Harnessing the elements for a sustainable future: Solar nowcasting and the dynamic Dutch North Sea" By Angela Meyer and Louise Nuijens Angela Meyer will show that mitigating climate change requires decarbonizing our energy generation which can be achieved through wide-spread harvesting of solar and wind energy. She will explain how accurate forecasts of solar radiation and wind are becoming increasingly important for balancing power supply and demand in the electricity grid as the share of volatile renewable energy is growing. Artificial intelligence and the latest generation of Earth-observing meteorological satellites can provide high-quality renewable energy forecasts to inform energy companies and grid operators. Her talk will demonstrate the potential of artificial intelligence for accurate weather and renewable energy forecasts to shape the path toward a more sustainable and resilient energy system. Angela Meyer has been an assistant professor of Energy Meteorology and Artificial Intelligence in the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Department of TU Delft since 2023. She has been a research group leader at Bern University of Applied Sciences since 2022. She obtained her PhD in Atmospheric Physics from ETH Zurich and gained industry experience as a data scientist at Hexagon AB and co-leader of an R&D program at Siemens Smart Infrastructure. Her research is supported by the European Commission, the Swiss Innovation Agency and National Science Foundation. Louise Nuijens will show that the Netherlands is facing global challenges due to climate change that include not only sea level rise, but also unprecedented warm North Sea temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. She will explain that clouds, solar radiation and wind over the North Sea and coast are part of a dynamic interconnected system that shapes weather and regional climate. Understanding this coupled system is very important as we face our future climate and requires advanced models and extensive data collection. More accurate information of wind, rain, fog and sunshine over the North Sea, one of the busiest coastal seas in the world, is becoming urgent. The North Sea is facing escalating challenges from shipping regulations and marine protection, while evolving into a renewable energy hub with a planned ten-to-twentyfold expansion of wind energy production to make the Netherlands climate-neutral by 2050. Louise Nuijens is an associate professor in Atmospheric Science in the Geoscience & Remote Sensing Department at TU Delft since 2017 and an ECMWF Fellow since 2019. Before coming to TUD, she worked as a Postdoctoral fellow at MIT, and as a group leader of the Observations and Process Studies group in the Atmosphere Department of the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany. Her research focuses on unraveling the physical processes that underlie the interaction of convection and clouds with atmospheric circulations (winds) and the implication of such processes for weather and climate. She combines field observations with high-resolution simulations and theoretical models. Registration: is mandatory via this link ► After the lectures there will be time for questions/discussion with the speakers and the audience ► Please join and bring your peers, this might be a chance to meet colleagues for new collaborations. ► Click here if you want to subscribe or to unsubscribe from the notifications of Climate Action events ► Go to our website ► Follow us on LinkedIn TU Delft Climate Action Programme Website

Climate Action Programme lecture by Herman Russchenberg

Climate Action Programme lecture by Herman Russchenberg 09 January 2025 12:45 till 13:45 - Location: TU Delft tbd | Add to my calendar You are cordially invited to our January lunch lecture: ‘Don’t leave me here, let me in’, says the voice from Pandora’s box. Date: Thursday 9 January 2025 Time: 12:45 - 13:45 (free vegan lunch from 12:15 if registered) Location: TU Delft; TBD Registration: is mandatory via this link Pandora opened the box out of curiosity and the shock of experience made her close it again. Was that a smart thing to do? Again, we had a warmer year than the ones before and the extreme events to date are only a glimpse what’s in store. And we are only halfway up on the slope to the expected warming – that is: if we don’t step up with our climate action. What options are open to us? Should we open the box for a second time? Herman Russchenberg is Pro Vice Rector Magnificus for Climate Action, one of the United Nations' sustainability goals. He is the figurehead of TU Delft's activities in this field, both for research and for education and valorisation. This takes shape within the TU Delft Climate Action Program, in which all faculties of the university work together to make a safer and fairer world possible. Climate risks are mapped out, adaptation methods are developed to arm ourselves against them, as well as mitigation techniques to combat global warming. Herman Russchenberg represents TU Delft in national and international forums on this theme. Registration : is mandatory via this link TU Delft Climate Action Programme Website

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TU Delft jointly wins XPRIZE Rainforest drone competition in Brazil

TU Delft jointly wins in the XPRIZE Rainforest competition in the Amazon, Brazil Imagine using rapid and autonomous robot technology for research into the green and humid lungs of our planet; our global rainforests. Drones that autonomously deploy eDNA samplers and canopy rafts uncover the rich biodiversity of these complex ecosystems while revealing the effects of human activity on nature and climate change. On November 15, 2024, after five years of intensive research and competition, the ETHBiodivX team, which included TU Delft Aerospace researchers Salua Hamaza and Georg Strunck, achieved an outstanding milestone: winning the XPRIZE Rainforest Bonus Prize for outstanding effort in co-developing inclusive technology for nature conservation. The goal: create automated technology and methods to gain near real-time insights about biodiversity – providing necessary data that can inform conservation action and policy, support sustainable bioeconomies, and empower Indigenous Peoples and local communities who are the primary protectors and knowledge holders of the planet’s tropical rainforests. The ETHBiodivX team, made of experts in Robotics, eDNA, and Data Insights, is tackling the massive challenge of automating and streamlining the way we monitor ecosystems. Leading the Robotics division, a collaboration between TU Delft’s Prof. Salua Hamaza, ETH Zurich’s Prof. Stefano Mintchev and Aarhus University’s Profs. Claus Melvad and Toke Thomas Høye, is developing cutting-edge robotic solutions to gather ecology and biology data autonomously. “We faced the immense challenge of deploying robots in the wild -- and not just any outdoor environment but one of the most demanding and uncharted: the wet rainforests. This required extraordinary efforts to ensure robustness and reliability, pushing the boundaries of what the hardware could achieve for autonomous data collection of images, sounds, and eDNA, in the Amazon” says prof. Hamaza. “Ultimately, this technology will be available to Indigenous communities as a tool to better understand the forest's ongoing changes in biodiversity, which provide essential resources as food and shelter to the locals.” . . . .

Students Amos Yusuf, Mick Dam & Bas Brouwer winners of Mekel Prize 2024

Master students Amos Yusuf, from the ME faculty (Mick Dam, from the EEMCS faculty and graduate Bas Brouwer have won the Mekel Prize 2024 for the best extra scientific activity at TU Delft: the development of an initiative that brings master students into the classroom teaching sciences to the younger generations. The prize was ceremonially awarded by prof Tim van den Hagen on 13 November after the Van Hasselt Lecture at the Prinsenhof, Delft. They received a statue of Professor Jan Mekel and 1.500,- to spend on their project. Insights into climate change are being openly doubted. Funding for important educational efforts and research are being withdrawn. Short clips – so called “reels” – on Youtube and TikTok threaten to simplify complex political and social problems. AI fakes befuddle what is true and what is not. The voices of science that contribute to those discussion with modesty, careful argument and scepticism, are drowned in noise. This poses a threat for universities like TU Delft, who strive to increase student numbers, who benefit from diverse student populations and aim to pass on their knowledge and scientific virtues to the next generation. It is, therefore, alarming that student enrolments to Bachelor and Master Programs at TU Delft have declined in the past year. Students in front of the class The project is aimed to make the sciences more appealing to the next generation. They have identified the problem that students tend miss out on the opportunity of entering a higher education trajectory in the Beta sciences – because they have a wrong picture of such education. In their mind, they depict it as boring and dry. In his pilot lecture at the Stanislas VMBO in Delft, Amos Yusuf has successfully challenged this image. He shared his enthusiasm for the field of robotics and presented himself as a positive role model to the pupils. And in return the excitement of the high school students is palpable in the videos and pictures from the day. The spark of science fills their eyes. Bas Brouwer Mick Dam are the founders of NUVO – the platform that facilitates the engagement of Master Students in high school education in Delft Their efforts offer TU Delft Master Students a valuable learning moment: By sharing insights from their fields with pupils at high school in an educational setting, our students can find identify their own misunderstandings of their subject, learn to speak in front of non-scientific audiences and peak into education as a work field they themselves might not have considered. An extraordinary commitment According to the Mekel jury, the project scored well on all the criteria (risk mitigation, inclusiveness, transparency and societal relevance). However, it was the extraordinary commitment of Amos who was fully immersed during his Master Project and the efforts of Brouwer and Dam that brought together teaching and research which is integral to academic culture that made the project stand out. About the Mekel Prize The Mekel Prize will be awarded to the most socially responsible research project or extra-scientific activity (e.g. founding of an NGO or organization, an initiative or realization of an event or other impactful project) by an employee or group of employees of TU Delft – projects that showcase in an outstanding fashion that they have been committed from the beginning to relevant moral and societal values and have been aware of and tried to mitigate as much as possible in innovative ways the risks involved in their research. The award recognizes such efforts and wants to encourage the responsible development of science and technology at TU Delft in the future. For furthermore information About the project: https://www.de-nuvo.nl/video-robotica-pilot/ About the Mekel Prize: https://www.tudelft.nl/en/tpm/our-faculty/departments/values-technology-and-innovation/sections/ethics-philosophy-of-technology/mekel-prize

New catheter technology promises safer and more efficient treatment of blood vessels

Each year, more than 200 million catheters are used worldwide to treat vascular diseases, including heart disease and artery stenosis. When navigating into blood vessels, friction between the catheter and the vessel wall can cause major complications. With a new innovative catheter technology, Mostafa Atalla and colleagues can change the friction from having grip to completely slippery with the flick of a switch. Their design improves the safety and efficiency of endovascular procedures. The findings have been published in IEEE. Catheter with variable friction The prototype of the new catheter features advanced friction control modules to precisely control the friction between the catheter and the vessel wall. The friction is modulated via ultrasonic vibrations, which overpressure the thin fluid layer. This innovative variable friction technology makes it possible to switch between low friction for smooth navigation through the vessel and high friction for optimal stability during the procedure. In a proof-of-concept, Atalla and his team show that the prototype significantly reduces friction, averaging 60% on rigid surfaces and 11% on soft surfaces. Experiments on animal aortic tissue confirm the promising results of this technology and its potential for medical applications. Fully assembled catheters The researchers tested the prototype during friction experiments on different tissue types. They are also investigating how the technology can be applied to other procedures, such as bowel interventions. More information Publicatie DOI : 10.1109/TMRB.2024.3464672 Toward Variable-Friction Catheters Using Ultrasonic Lubrication | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore Mostafa Atalla: m.a.a.atalla@tudelft.nl Aimee Sakes: a.sakes@tudelft.nl Michaël Wiertlewski: m.wiertlewski@tudelft.nl Would you like to know more and/or attend a demonstration of the prototype please contact me: Fien Bosman, press officer Health TU Delft: f.j.bosman@tudelft.nl/ 0624953733