Cursor 19 - year 57

19 4 June 2015 | year 57

Biweekly magazine of the Eindhoven University of Technology For the latest news: www.cursor.tue.nl/en and follow @TUeCursor_news on

New student team wants to build first-ever car on formic acid 29 May - FAST, a new team of TU/e students, wants to have built the very first formic acid-fueled car within a year. The students continue Georgy Filonenko’s Ph.D. research, who graduated with honors back in April. They hope to travel Europe in their formic acid car in the summer of 2016.

Hydrogen is considered the energy carrier of the future. But the gas can only be stored and transported under high pressure, which makes the use in vehicles both challenging and dangerous. Adding carbon dioxide (CO2), water can be converted to formic acid and vice versa: less risky to transport and store.

and tuecursor on

New education system “considerable improvement” 27 May - TU/e’s new Learning Management System should offer students and teachers a complete set of services. From September 2016 onwards, the new system will gradually replace many of the existing education systems. Current systems are outdated and require intensive maintenance. New developments like the growing popularity of MOOCs also ask for a “considerable improvement”.

The Learning Management System helps teachers and students to cooperate and communicate course-related data and information. Think of discussion forums, wikis, and e-mail services, or assignments and readers. TU/e won’t be developing the new system itself, but purchase one.

Student ratings TU/e education among highest in Netherlands

Student of B stuck in Chinuilt Environment a after study 26 May - Stud trip y association Mollier was fo Jonathan Ez rc

ed to leave Su echiels behind rinam graduate at Beijing Inte Ezechiel’s trav student rn at ional Airport af el documents, ter a study trip with which he had traveled to in China.

China via the Ne therlands and Germany, wer e not accepted for his return flight. Mollier started a fund raiser and help Ezechiels mak ed e it back home.

22 May - Students rate their educational programs at TU/e at an average of 3.8 out of 5. This is shown by the 2015 National Student Survey, in which around 40% of all Dutch students took part. Out of the 13 regular Dutch universities, TU/e follows Wageningen UR with the second-highest average score.

The average satisfaction level of TU/e students has shown a slight increase since 2010, although in that year TU/e still received an average of 3.6. Students in Eindhoven give their university a good score on all criteria, ranging from a 4.3 for study environment to a 3.3 for career preparation. All the educational programs also receive a score of ‘good’.

A notable highlight is the Master’s in Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion, which gains a 4.3.

More news on www.cursor.tue.nl/en

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Mitsubishi vs Volvo: Living in harmony or controlling nature

It was one of those rainy days in downtown Amsterdam and a car, one of those big Mitsubishi station wagons, stopped for a red traffic light. The car behind, one of those big Volvos a.k.a. “the tank”, could not stop on time and crashed into the station wagon. The Volvo pulled out of the station wagon, and both drivers got out of their cars to see the damage.

The Mitsubishi station wagon was reduced to about two thirds and looked like an accordion with its rear completely crashed in. The Volvo, on the contrary, had only a few scratches on the bumper. What the story does further say is that the Mitsubishi driver was feeling ok after this sudden shock, but the Volvo driver was completely shaken up and still trembling.

Why is this? In the case of the Mitsubishi, the shock of the crash was absorbed by the body of the car, the rear gave in hence protecting the driver. Nothing like that for the Volvo: as for a real tank, the super solid body (yes, Swedish steel) would rather damage the environment instead of giving in. So, in the one case you have a quite damaged car but a sound and safe driver, and in the other case, an intact car, but a quite shaken up driver. It’s a clear case which option is preferable.

This is obviously an old story because nowadays car manufacturers around the world have all taken over the approach of Mitsubishi and other Japanese makes: vehicles need to be designed and built to be safer both for their occupants and for those around them, such as cyclists and pedestrians.

This was not the case for the Volvo.

This story illustrates the way we approach nature around the world. There are, roughly speaking, three clusters. In some cultures, people need to master and control nature totally, along with all kinds of processes: technical, industrial, financial, and even your time and your life. Nothing is left to chance, just about everything is planned, structured and supposedly under control. Technology is a key player. When things still go wrong, think, for example, of natural hazards, people are left rather perplex. The Netherlands is one of these cultures, just like most of the North-Atlantic regions (Sweden, Volvo). Here water is, of course, serious business and it needs to be either domesticated or at least under control. But the same goes for people with their private agendas, daily schedules, and somehow even the end of their lives.

In other cultures, people traditionally don’t have this need or urge to control nature, various processes and their destiny so much. They live more in harmony with nature and are much more adaptive to its cycles, their own environment and uncertainty in general. They are not so driven by technology; they go with the environmental flow, and spirituality along with the hereafter, astrology, numerology and the like are important aspects of life. Finally, some cultures combine both in an evolving balance (Japan, Mitsubishi). Things are, of course, changing rapidly due to globalization and the younger (urban) generations show similar behavioral patterns. What about you? Your horoscope for tomorrow says you may have a car accident… will you go outside or stay home?

trainer inte Vincent Merk, rcultural co mmunicat io

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22 | Zoom in

4 June 2015

Seven percent excellent Paul Koenraad is quite clear.

Excellent students within your university - “you should want them, support them, indulge them. They are your idols; the people you will push forward later on and whom you will introduce by saying: ‘Boys, these are our stars’”.

He mentions Solar Team Eindhoven, which was born out of a former group of honors students who saw even more challenges and opportunities than they could tackle within their - time-constrained - honors track.

He also refers to the work of honors students who were allowed to show their light art works during GLOW, to the participation by several students in the international competition iGem and the success of a group of students who from their honors track attained the final of an international big data competition in Malaysia. All of these are “highly visible results” of the Honors Academy, says the Director – or at least they are successes for which the seeds were planted during honors tracks. “We have created a breeding ground to allow things like that to come to fruition.”

Excelling during your TU/e study program is possible in a number of different ways, for example via a double Bachelor, a cum laude, a top sports career beside your study.

And TU/e also has the Honors Academy, featuring ten excellence tracks for Bachelor students.

Koenraad refers to the so-called key performance indicator that was

Diana Vinke

Texts | Monique van de Ven and Han Konings Photos | Bart van Overbeeke A playground where almost anything goes, is possible or should at least become possible. That is what Academic Director Paul Koenraad thinks the TU/e Honors Academy is. It is the playground for students who dare to stand out, who strive to go beyond the limits of their own capacities and education, who want to challenge themselves to the utmost. As ambitious as these ‘excellent students’ usually are, as ambitious is the performance agreement with the Ministry which TU/e needs to satisfy with an ‘excellent’ score. “We still have a lot of ground to cover.”

imposed upon TU/e for this by the Ministry, as it was upon other institutions. This performance agreement implies that as of the next academic year seven percent of all second-year students must take part in a program within the Honors Academy - the only excellence track of TU/e with a formal recog­ nition from Sirius, which has been commissioned by the Ministry to work on talent development in higher education.

That seven percent is by no means a small requirement, as is emphasized

by Koenraad and his colleague Diana Vinke, who as education policy officer was also involved in setting up the Honors Academy.

“Indeed, seven percent is very ambitious, especially so because the Honors Academy was actually only started in 2013”, explains Koenraad, who has been on board since 2014 as Scientific Director.

While honors tracks have a longer

history at TU/e, “those activities were usually conducted from within the departments themselves, without anyone or anything coordinating this and actually being responsible for them”.

Along with the arrival of the Bachelor College, which allows students more room for elective courses and broadening and deepening anyway, the honors offer at TU/e has been given another setup. An honors track in the Bachelor’s program amounts to 30 ECTS on top of the regular program in the second and third years of the Bachelor phase, which implies some ten hours of extra work - or challenge, whatever you wish to call it - per week. Students work on projects they have defined themselves, usually in teams, though within one central theme. A link with the strategic areas of TU/e Health, Smart Mobility and Energy - forms one of the starting points.

Koenraad: “On top of your study, you can realize something that you find tremendously exciting and interesting and with which you get every support from specialists.

Then TU/e is your playground.”

For several months now a lot of hard work has also been devoted to an honors program for the Master phase, counting for some 20 ECTS. The greatest difference from excelling in the Bachelor’s program is that honors in the Master’s is oriented much more towards the individual; there are no tracks with fixed themes. “Students put together their own challenging package. This may be in the form of an additional traineeship, extra subjects (in another department), business research or the development of a business plan; in fact anything goes, provided it is challenging”, says Koenraad.

“It is not an ‘elite class’” Pushing against your own limits, exceeding them - that is what characterizes the -potential - honors student, in Diana Vinke’s opinion.

Koenraad adds: “They are students Paul Koenraad

with the capacities to master their specific subject well who also have the drive to go the extra mile apart from that. Often these are also the inspiring leaders who you would like to see at the helm later - in the business community, politics, wherever”. Still, he hastens to add: “You also get students who score sixes and sevens, but who conti­ nuously challenge themselves to aspire higher and further.

That, too, is excellence”.

Therefore Vinke and Koenraad underline that the Honors Academy definitely does not want to be an ‘elite class’. “‘Elite’ to me means that a student expects all doors to be opened for him or her simply for the reason that they are in the Honors Academy. Of course, it does not work like that; you really need to demonstrate that you have a lot to offer”, Vinke emphasizes.

Jessica van de Ven (official of the Education and Student Service Center who works at the office of the Honors Academy) mentions another important feature: “Within the Honors Academy you are working with students of a kind who think along the same lines, and who challenge each other even more among themselves”. Vinke adds: “Evaluations have also borne out that for many students this recognition is an important reason for joining such an honors program”.

Honors Academy as tenth department At present the intake of second-year students in an honors track is five percent. Vinke: “We still have a lot of ground to cover if we are to attain the seven percent as at September 1.” Not as if TU/e will abruptly stop the Honors Academy if that percentage should not be attained, she says, “but the university would miss out on a great deal of money in that case”. Koenraad does not venture to guess how much that would be exactly, “but it is safe to assume

that it is a couple of million euros.

It does feel like a sword of Damocles hanging over me, actually”.

There is a number of TU/e departments that Koenraad thinks are close to the ‘seven percent excellent’ pursued by the university.

According to him no single department is unique, although he does mention that a relatively young honors track Big Data program is extremely popular.

However, a number of departments are still far below the intended seven percent. Whilst the interviewees do not disclose which departments need to put their shoulders to the wheel in particular - it is quite obvious that the Honors Academy has not ‘landed’ equally successfully everywhere yet, as Koenraad indicates. “Some deans and Program Directors still think of it as an extra obligation burdening their agendas over which they have no control themselves. I do understand that in a way; everybody at TU/e is buried in work already and suddenly there is one more task added to your plate.

However that may be, there is simply a group of students who clearly need to be challenged more than we can do in our regular educational programs; they are just not satisfied yet. This does take time, but lecturers do get to cooperate with very highly motivated students in return.”

Moreover, departments have a big role in ‘scouting’ students that are eligible for an excellence track.

Vinke: “Their lines with the students are much shorter, they can see whether students demonstrate that open and eagerly inquisitive attitude, especially the teacher coaches.” Jessica van de Ven: “Students actually feel much more honored when someone from their own department says ‘We think that this is something for you’ than when they just receive a central email”.

Koenraad would like the Honors Academy in time to become “a tenth department of this university”.

Although he says it with a smile, the core of his message is serious nonetheless. “Now we have some one hundred and twenty students in an honors track, but before long we may be talking about some three hundred students, including the Master. Then you are really talking about a certain bulk and a significant group, also in terms of tasks and objectives. I am really going to fight for a more pronounced position for the Honors Academy within TU/e.”

tue.nl/honors

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“If there was a plan at all, I didn’t make it” Where she comes from, how she likes living in the Netherlands or why she has decided on architecture? Whilst these may be obvious questions to be asked to a Chinese student in Eindhoven, they were seldom posed to Jing Cui in the past three years. People want to know especially: how on earth did she manage as a Chinese woman to follow a Dutch-language Bachelor’s program as well as an honors track?

She does understand the question, by the way, Jing emphasizes. “People are proud of me. In fact I am rather proud of myself as well.” The language did form a challenge. For a full year she studied Dutch - her third language -, after which she passed the NT2 language test.

However, everyday Dutch practice turned out to be far more complicated than the theory she had studied in her language class. Especially during the first year of her Bachelor’s program Jing encountered a great many problems. “All the lectures and teaching materials are in Dutch; as a result, it takes me much more time and energy to study all that than it would for a Dutch student. Besides, certain subjects are reasonably ‘culturally determined’. I have had to read and study a lot to gain a better understanding of the Netherlands and the Dutch culture, and to benefit from the cultural differences in my work and my designs.”

Contrary to her own expectations she completed her Bachelor’s program in time and in Dutch. Also, she took part in the advanced Honors Horizon program and did a combined ITO (Integral Technical Design)-project in the minor. Her achievements in the Bachelor phase did not go by unnoticed and Jing was rewarded with an excellence grant for her Master’s program.

Architecture is the second Bachelor’s program she has completed, by the way; earlier on, in her native country she already obtained her accountant’s diploma – which her parents thought was a more appropriate career path for a girl than that of an architect. “I listened to them and studied well – even before I graduated I was working for Ernst & Young. Although I had no trouble doing the work, I was not passionate about it. My friend (who is now her husband, ed.) studied at TU/e, one of his housemates studied Architecture. I decided to seize the opportunity and turn my life around.”

She has no grand plans or ambitions. Her résumé, featuring a top high school in Shanghai, top universities in China and the Netherlands as well as a number of ‘honors’ on top, might make one suspect she has planned her life carefully, “but I’m not much of a planner. I just follow my heart, do the things I like and do them as best I can. If there was a plan at all, I didn’t make it, it must be a plan by Him. The only thing I am sure of is that I’m doing quite alright and count myself blessed.”

Jing Cui, a Master student of Architecture, Building and Planning, specializations Architecture and Structural Design - followed the Honors Horizon program of which the setup has meanwhile been changed.

“Friends are sorry they haven’t started it” Yes, he’s always been inclined to assume a leadership role. “When I’m not in control, I find that difficult to cope with, when I have to swallow my criticism.” In September 2012 Bram Nuijten studied Civil Engineering in Delft for one week all told and then switched to Architecture, Building and Planning at TU/e. “It suited me better and in Delft they were focused on water very much indeed.” Despite having missed the Intro, he soon built up a group of close friends.

Many of his friends were also invited to take part in the Honors Academy, but almost everybody dropped out.

“Often with the excuse of a lack of time. I decided just to go and do it and to see as I went along whether I would get into trouble time-wise.”

Bram selected the Smart Mobility track. This was partly based on his previous history in Delft. “At Civil Engineering you could choose infrastructure or road construction. The latter I found rather interesting, although I didn’t have any idea how I could flesh that out exactly within this track.”

Ten people started simultaneously with Bram in the Smart Mobility track and they decided to focus on one project jointly: the design and construction of an autonomous taxi, for which no driver would be required anymore. “The group was quite varied and we have utilized everybody’s know-how well.” For instance, the mechanical engineers devoted themselves to work on the Twizzy that they used as a taxi. “I have focused on the question how we could apply this system in Eindhoven and that is how I got interested in urban design and planning.”

In the second year new students had to be fitted in with the team. “A special moment”, Bram explains. “Those people came up with their own wishes and the question was whether they were prepared to join our project.

That happened to be the case, the new input had a refreshing effect and then we also started looking at the legal side of this project.”

Bram is now on the eve of his graduation. The taxi never reached the stage of being driverless, but it does move cooperatively, which means that it responds to cars in front.

He says that the Honors Academy has given him a new view of his study and has taught him things that he would not have learned in the regular program. “Take the presentation of your project within companies and at conferences. We have had André Kuipers in our car! For such occasions it is really essential that you have a thorough basic knowledge of the whole project.”

His friends who at the time let slip the opportunity to take part regularly tell him that they do regret that now.

“Especially when they see that such a project comes with really interesting extras as well, like a trip to France and Switzerland, during which we visited CERN among other places. They would all have loved to be part of that.”

Bram Nuijten, a third-year student of Architecture, Building and Planning

24 | Zoom in

4 June 2015

More Women Needed “Girls need to be stimulated to enjoy math, chemistry and physics and it has to happen at grade school. There are a lot of girls who like these subjects, but they get the idea it’s only for boys.

They think, ‘I don’t want to be a mathematician. I’ll be a nurse.’ Noortje Bax from the Department of Biomedical Engineering is a newly-appointed board member of the WISE-Network (Women in Science Eindhoven) and her concerns are an oft-repeated lament - how do we get more young women to choose science? And once they enter these professions, how do we keep them there?

The problem of attracting girls to science starts early. Very early.

Numerous studies reveal that the transference of gender stereotypes - i.e. which careers and tasks are for boys and which are for girls happens by the time a child is about four or five. By the time many children take their first steps into a classroom, they’ve already learned through their parents, siblings, teachers, friends and the media that boys are, for example, fire fighters or builders, girls are nurses or teachers.

How exactly do we learn our “place” so early in life? Though the assimilation of cultural norms and expectations is a complex process, occurring in a myriad of forms, simple changes in our own habits could have an impact on how a child views herself. For instance, when was the last time you bought a gift for a child? What did you buy?

According to a seminal study by sociologist Barry Schwartz from 1967, the kinds of gifts parents (or others) give to children influence the development and maintenance of their identities. Schwartz asserts in his paper, The Social Psychology of the Gift, that ‘Gifts are one of the ways in which the pictures that others have of us in their minds are transmitted. ... The function of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ gifts relative to sexual identification is clear enough. By the giving of different types of ‘masculine’ gifts, for example, the mother and father express their image of the child as ‘a little soldier’ or ‘a little chemist or engineer.’’ And while you may think that an academic paper from 1967 has no real significance in today’s world, take a stroll in any toy store and you’ll be immediately confronted with how very real the problem still is. Sexist divisions in toy aisles still put the construction toys and chemistry sets in the ‘blue aisle’, while the ‘pink aisle’ is filled with

princesses and dolls.

And, of course, the stories our parents read to us also have an impact on our ideas of gender roles.

Mara van Welie, 24, is a master’s student in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovations Sciences and says her mom consciously fought against traditional stereotypes in a very simple way: “Whenever my mother read Jip and Janneke to me [classic Dutch children’s characters] she always switched their names in the story.

Normally, Janneke is the scared one and Jip is solving all the problems.

But, for me, it was just the opposite.

I didn’t know until I was older that she had done that. Maybe that’s one reason why I never judged a technical education as being too hard.”

Changing the Image ‘It’s boring and not really applicable to what I want to do. What can I do with that knowledge?’, that’s something I often hear young women say about studying the hard sciences”, explains Katja Pahnke, the managing director of TU/e’s High Tech Systems Center. “Young people want to see the direct impact of their education and I can understand that. I was the same.

I think women need to think about what they want to accomplish and how to get there rather than focus on a program of study.” It’s advice Panhke followed herself at the start of her career when she flipped things by first choosing a company she wanted to work for and only then following the education that would support that choice.

“I strongly believed that company [Umweltschutz Nord Ganderkesee in Germany] could change the world. I believed in their technology and I really wanted to learn more

about it. Knowing I wanted to be a part of this company’s vision was a huge motivating factor for choosing my education.”

Boring and difficult - it’s a theme Mara van Welie has heard numerous times from young women as a student ambassador. “So many girls ask me ‘Is it going to be really difficult?’ A boy would never ask that. It’s ridiculous. I think many girls are much more capable of doing this sort of education than boys because they work so hard.”

And even young women who arrive on campus for tours - who are obviously interested and have the aptitude to study at a technical university - are worried they won’t fit in, says Van Welie. “A lot of girls have ideas about technical univer­ sities that they don’t like; that it’s all guys, not lively, not social.

They’re often surprised when they come here and see how it really is.”

These sorts of concerns are exactly why many educators feel the image and structure of science education needs to change. One such effort is currently underway in the UK with the proposed construction of that country’s first new university in 30 years, the New Model in Technology and Engineering (NMITE).

The university will model itself on the Olin College of Engineering in the US and aims to match the American college’s unique record of achieving equal numbers of men and women among both lecturers and students. So what will be different? For one, the university is considering admitting applicants who don’t have the usual mathe­ matical qualifications in order to address traditional gender imbalances at secondary schools.

Van Welie thinks TU/e’s recent changes will eventually help attract more women: “The Bachelor College invites us to talk differently about

engineering. For example, we can tell prospective students that they can also learn about end users or that engineering can be a creative area of study. Immediately, you turn it into a different story. I think it really helps if you give the discipline more of a face and not only emphasize the idea that it’s difficult and all about mathematics.”

And baby makes three Once women enter a scientific career, how do you get them to stay? Both inside and outside of academia, the situation is dismal.

For example, the EU lags behind developing nations and the US in the proportion of women in technology leadership roles.

Women occupy just 11.2% of these roles in Europe, the Middle East and Africa compared to 18.1% in North America, 13.4% in Latin America and 11.5% in Asia. Though it’s not the only reason women opt out of the labor market, many women feel forced to scale back or quit once they become mothers.

“There was a sign on the wall of my sons’ daycare that I always liked, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’”, remembers Moniek de Liefde-van Beest, lab manager and biological safety officer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, continuing, “Who says you have to do it alone?”

In countries like the Netherlands, where the vast majority of mothers reduce their working days to 3 or 4 after the birth of their first child (76.6% of all Dutch women work 36 hours or less), the social pressure to curb your career can be enormous. “I do hate the ‘doe maar gewoon’ mentality [Do normal.

Do what everyone else does],” says De Liefde-van Beest, “I’ve always tried to inspire the young women

around me. This can be done! You don’t have to stop working just because you have a kid. But you do have to do it together. After all, there are two parents.”

Noortje Bax says it’s a problem the WISE-Network is striving to correct, “A lot of career tracks don’t take into account that you might want to take pregnancy leave. For example, candidates for a UD position are compared according to their age and the expected output at that age, without taking into account whether you had kids, leaves of absence, or work part-time which, obviously, leads to less scientific output. We’re talking to the university board about changing that. Women are just as capable as men of being at the top levels of a beta science university, also when they’re a mother.” In addition to providing woman-to-woman coaches to help encourage the university’s women to reach for higher positions, the WISE-Network also gives advice on how to combine family life with working in academia.

“If I had to give young women one piece of advice”, says Katja Pahnke, “it would be this: follow your heart and your interests and don’t look for any guarantees that you’ll be successful. If you follow your talents, you will find your place. And every choice can be combined with family.

Sure, sometimes you’ll have issues organizing everything but that’ll just make you a better manager!”

Advice like this from successful, scientific women like Pahnke is just what Mara van Welie thinks would encourage more girls to choose for the hard sciences. “Good examples are really important. Girls need to put a female face to the study because all we ever hear about are examples of famous men.”

Interviews | Angela Daley Photo | Bart van Overbeeke

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26 | People

4 June 2015

And how are things in Ingolstadt?

More and more TU/e students go abroad for their studies to follow courses, internships or a doctorate path.

What is it like to find your way in a new country? Students tell their stories.

Hello from Ingolstadt! Ingolstadt is a medium-sized city in Southern Germany. You must be thinking: “That doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as other (possible holiday) destinations I came across in this column”. But what if I tell you it’s home to the well-known German car manufacturer Audi, and to the second largest automotive plant of Europe with over 40,000 people working here every day.

Every new Audi model is designed and tested here, not just consumer cars, but the famous Le Mans-winning race cars as well. I am involved in automated driving (the hottest topic in automotive today, if you ask me) within Audi’s pre-development. My department sent a completely automated car around the Hockenheimring at racing speed last October!

At this point you probably think: “Oay, great environment to work in if you love automotive and all, but what about the fun? I don’t plan on going abroad to be working 24/7…”. Don’t worry, Ingolstadt is very close to Munich in the region Bayern, and there is a lot going on. Of course I went to the ‘Münchner Oktoberfest’, which features beer, beer and more beer. I also went to a soccer match of FC Bayern München and got to see Arjen Robben play!

And I experienced Christmas like never before thanks to the many markets, the Christmas celebrations in my department, and the ‘Feuerzangenbowle’ (a typical warm Christmas drink that Germans enjoy while watching a 1944 comedy of the same name).

Since Bayern is very close to the Austrian border (and so to the Alps) I can go skiing for a weekend, which my colleagues and I did, of course. But I found out quite quickly that the ‘après-ski’ was more my kind of skiing.

I really think you should be convinced by now that Ingolstadt can indeed be just as exciting as destinations far, far away!

To MSc mE Bruls, Enginleectrical ering Would you also like to write an article about your time abroad? Please send an email to cursor@tue.nl.

Read more stories online: www.cursor.tue.nl/en

Life after TU/e

Name: Agus Mawira Place of Birth: Jakarta, Indonesia Date of Birth: October 2, 1947 At TU/e: Studied Electrical Engineering. Received Kandidaats (bachelo r) degree in 1969, and Ingenieur (master) degree in 1974. In June 1974, I joined the Telecommuni­ cations Department, where I worked for one year as a scientific assistan t. I received my Ph.D. degree in 1999 from prof.dr. G. Brussaard of the Department of Electrical Engineering at TU/e.

Current position: Retired. I’ve worked at the R&D center of KPN for nearly thirty years.

What are you doing now?

I am now retired. I’ve worked at the R&D center of KPN for nearly thirty years. That thirty-year period was marked by a strong cooperation with the Departm ent of Electrotechnical Engineering of TU/e. Especially fruitful were the long term collabor ations with the late prof. dr. Gert Brussard and dr. Mati Herben. I’ve worked in the field of radiowave propagation, and developed planning methodologies for radio networks.

I was a senior scientist in that organization. One advantage of working at the KPN R&D center was that I got to be part of major developments in Telecom munications.

In the early days, microwave and satellite communication were the focus, later that became mobile radio. Especially exciting were the development of the standards for the GSM system in which KPN Research was involved.

Now I do a little consultancy work occasionally, especially for Dutch compan y Wavecall, which develops and sells radio network planning tools worldwide. I’ve taught Tai Chi for many years, as part of the International Taoist Tai Chi Society founded

by Master Moy Lin Shin in Canada.

How do you reflect on your time at TU/e?

I had a wonderful and interesting time. Students had a lot freedom in scheduling their study then. It was also in the middle of the ‘flower power’ movement, This which has resulted in some students taking their time graduating. As for me, I am grateful that I was able to pursue my study as well as explore many subjects beyond the regular curriculum.

What happens to international students after they graduate from TU/e? Do they go job hunting in the Netherlands, pack their bags and explore the world, or return to their home countries? International TU/e graduates talk about their lives after TU/e.

Did you consider returning to Indonesia?

My original plan was to return to Indonesia after having gained some job experience in Europe. But my visits to Indonesia showed me that the research work that I would like to do was, at that time, hardly available there. So I just stuck around in the Netherlands and by and by I got to feel very much at home here.

What advice would you give current students?

The best bet for finding a job is to be an excellent student. Another importa nt factor is to be well-networked in your field. And don’t forget to enjoy the student experience.

It is a great privilege to be allowed to gain knowledge and to meet people who are often leaders and pioneers in the world of academics and research. And, last but not least: you get to make international friends.

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4 burning questions 1 ’s on What f your o r e ov ? the c ation t r e s dis

2 Wh a peo t do yo ple u te a whe t par ll ties n abo ut y they a sk our rese arch ?

Thomas van Kempen | Biomedical Engineering 1 | cover

The front and back cover shows how blood clots form.

It starts on the back with separate platelets. They start clotting. Then fibrin threads form between the platelets, turning the clot into a thick, gooey mass. I’ve also printed graphs containing research data on the back. The curve that indicates the stiffness of the coagulation turns into the wall of the blood vessel. The curve in the lower left (a lissajous curve) also represents data.

2 | parties Everyone knows coagulation is vital. If blood didn’t coagulate and you cut yourself, you’d bleed to death. And everyone knows a thing or two about heart attacks and strokes. These are also caused by clotted blood, but on the inside of the blood vessel. Coagulation, then, can be a life-saver or a killer. To better understand this crucial process, I’ve modeled the mechanics of the clotting.

2 | parties I work on mathematical models for groups of interacting individuals. These ‘individuals’ can be animals, but also people, vehicles or robots. In my thesis I treat several aspects of those models, such as the influence of doors and walls, and of the angle of perception.

3 What person, technology, or device has been essential for your research?

does How efit n e b ty socie ur work? yo from

How blood clots form

3 | essential I couldn’t have done without a

rheometer: a device that measures the liquidity and fluidity of a material. The rheometer enables us to see how blood clots form step by step, from liquid to solid.

4 | society benefit

Blood clots are the number one direct cause of death. If we were to understand the process better, we might predict and prevent them from forming during angioplasty and surgery on cancer patients with an aberrant coagulation rate.

Joep Evers | Mathematics and Computer Science 1 | cover The cover shows a sculpture based on the work of M.C. Escher: a geometric tessellation that consists of birds and fish. This is not just a beautiful work of art, but it also symbolizes the self-organization that occurs in groups of for instance birds or fish in nature.

4

Groups of interacting individuals

4 | society benefit It is important to understand the behavior of groups of interacting individuals. Often large groups of people meet, for instance during major events and in public buildings. Uncomfortable or dangerous situations must be prevented. Traffic flows also consist of a large number of individuals (cars) that influence each other and respond to each other. To ‘fluidize’ motion in traffic jams, understanding of the basic mechanisms of vehicular traffic is required.

3 | essential I used measure theory. A measure is a mathematical object that describes the distribution in space of the people, birds or fish we are considering. Roughly speaking, using a measure-theoretical description, we can deduce group behavior from what happens at the individual level.

Maria Bartel | Biomedical Engineering 1 | cover In the background, you see a protein 14-3-3, which I’ve worked with in my thesis. The puzzle pieces show the different ‘molecular concepts’ to influence protein-protein interactions of the 14-3-3 protein.

Miriam Sowa designed it.

2 | parties 14-3-3 is a protein that interacts with other proteins in a cell. So it can influence many cellular interactions. If one of these interactions is not working properly, you could get a serious illness, including different types of cancer and Alzheimer’s. We need to find molecules that repair and fix these faulty interactions, as that is the basis of future drugs.

Fixing faulty interactions in cells 3 | essential Friendly colleagues who were willing to lend a hand have been of great help: I spent the first two years of my research in Dortmund, Germany. The people over there helped me to get started.

Then after two years I moved to Eindhoven and my new colleagues helped me to find my way here and in the new lab.

4 | society benefit Finding new molecules to influence 14-3-3

protein-protein interactions is the first step in developing future drug molecules and to find cures for serious diseases.

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