Slash 12 - In English

12 september 2015

The magazine for the Eindhoven University of Technology

The Mission: How can technology help us live healthier lives?

David Gianotten ‘A good architect has to have more skills than only architectural insight’

From lectures to MOOC: 60 years of education at TU/e

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Josien Pluim (1971), Professor of Medical Image Analysis.

She held her inaugural lecture ‘Adapting and measuring’ on June 26th.

j.pluim@tue.nl

Text Tom Jeltes PHoto Bart van Overbeeke

Book

‘I started studying business admini­ stration in Groningen, but after a year I felt like I hadn’t acquired enough specialist knowledge. That’s why I switched to computer science.

During the first year in that program, we focused only on mathematics; I thoroughly enjoyed that. When I was trying to figure out what to do for my thesis project, I saw a book in a teacher’s bookcase about medical image analysis. It was a revelation for me that you can do that with computer science. With what little internet you had in the late 90s, I found information about the editor of that book - who just so happened to work at UMC Utrecht’s Image Sciences Institute.

I called to ask if I could come by.’

Bribed

‘I sometimes joke that my supervisor bribed me to pursue a PhD with a dinner. For the money you did not have to do it at that time. I never thought that I’d become a scientist - let alone a professor - but my graduation project showed me that I really like doing research. I still also applied for jobs at companies at that time but that process also showed me that it would be a good choice to do a PhD. So after graduation, I stayed in Utrecht.’

Image Registration Broad ‘I did my PhD research on image registration.

That is the linking of two or more images so that you can compare, pixel by pixel, images made by two different scanners, or scans made at different times. Image registration is important for several reasons including to be able to see whether a tumor has grown or to combine complementary information provided by MRI and CT scans. We’ve deve­ loped software to address these problems; and that software is open source and, therefore, available for free to everyone.’

‘I have a lot of varying interests. Before I went to study in Groningen, I did some courses at what was then called Oxford Polytechnic. I studied Japanese, photography and English history.

In terms of content, I haven’t really done anything with what I learned but I can highly recommend going abroad - if only to learn English really well.

Since I finished my PhD, I’ve built up a reputation in the imaging registration field. At that stage of your career you need to specialize or you’ll stay invisible. Once you’ve built a group, then you can start exploring more broadly.’

Group On page 47 backward / with Cees Midden

‘Because I’ve been appointed as a professor, I’m now the head of the Medical Image Analysis group, which was without a group leader for awhile. There was no full-time permanent staff anymore but, fortunately, the research being conducted by the PhD students and postdocs was still going well. One of my important tasks is to make this group a real one again. And as far as education goes, there’s a lot to do such as adapting our courses to the Bachelor College and the Graduate School. I want us to give our students a good educa­ tion so they’ll have a solid basis to go elsewhere in the world to build something of their own.’

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

no.12 september 2015

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An architect from OMA

colofon Slash is the magazine for external relations and alumni of the Eindhoven University of Technology and comes out three times per year.

Total or partial use of Slash’s articles can only be done in consultation with the editors and with acknowledgment of their source. The use of photographs or illustrations is only allowed in conjunction with the creator’s permission. www.tue.nl/slash

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Education at TU/e: from all buttoned up in a suit to shorts with flip-flops

Editorial Address Eindhoven University of Technology Communications Expertise Centre, Postbox 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, e-mail slash@tue.nl, Tel (040) 24733 30/247 4020 Head editor Han Konings Final editing and coordination Brigit Span Translation Angela Daley Magazine concept Maters & Hermsen Journalistiek, CEC. Design Natasha Franc

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24/29 Special

32/35 The Spark

Smart Mobility

Antonio Liotta

30/31 Alumni

38/39 Planner/ Venturer

Alumni as coaches

From chemistry to animal protection

Algorithms to fight cancer

Editorial advisory board drs. Steef Blok, prof.dr. Carlijn Bouten, mr.drs. Ben Donders, prof.dr.ir.Maarten Steinbuch Do you want to advertize in Slash?

Please inquire with H&J Uitgevers, Tel (010) 451 55 10 Do you want to receive Slash?

Register at: www.tue.nl/slash ISSN: 2212-8468

Gaming with the magical Manus Machina

keep in touch Interested in collaborating with TU/e or in studying, working or getting your PhD with us? Or would you like to keep in touch as an alumnus?

Here are our contact details:

Collaboration (strategic partnership, contract research) TU/e Innovation Lab, +31 (0)40 247 48 22, Innovationlab@tue.nl Employment or PhD candidates Personnel Department +31 (0)40 247 20 90, jobs@tue.nl Designers Education Stan Ackermans Institute +31 (0)40 247 24 52, sai@3tu.nl Studying (bachelor, master)

Education and Student Services Center, +31 (0)40 247 47 47, studeren@tue.nl Alumni +31 (0)40 247 34 90, alumninet@tue.nl Press Office and Communi­ cations Expertise Center +31 (0)40 247 48 45, cec@tue.nl, www.tue.nl

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Now/

Gaming

with the magical Manus Machina Navigating through a virtual world with your hands - that’s the idea behind the Manus Machina, known as the Manus. It’s a data glove that replaces controller, mouse and keyboard and was developed by a group of (former) Eindhoven students looking to capitalize on virtual reality’s rapid emergence.

Made from everyday components From idea to prototype in two weeks It was June 2014 and virtual reality was hot. The hype around Oculus Rift had especially taken on huge proportions. But while all sorts of things were happening in the field of eyeglasses and treadmills, the world of gaming controllers remained conspicuously silent.

Bob Vlemmix, who’d just finished a Communications degree at Fontys, wondered why nothing was going on with hands. And the idea for the Manus was born. He soon called Tim Veenendaal, also a member of the student roll-playing society, Knights of the Kitchen Table, and within two weeks the Software Science student had put together a working prototype.

Although they prematurely terminated their participation in crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, their project received so much publicity that they were selected for the Startup Bootcamp HighTechXL. During this accelerator program for tech startups, the now five-member team developed an alpha version of the Manus within a few months. Since then, the team has expanded to eleven, including (fashion) designers and programmers. The everyday components from the early phase of the project are definitely now in the past. Vlemmix: ‘The gyroscope was still glued on the glove and the glove had to be secured with Velcro because the case was so big.

Now, we can buy the products and machines we need.’

Text Freke Sens Photo Manus Machina

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

Mechanical hand The wireless glove includes five flex sensors that measure the bend of the fingers and the hand’s rotation and position, among other things. Therefore, the glove becomes mouse, keyboard and controller in one.

The technology is partly hidden in a 1.5-millimeter casing and is partially integrated into the Lycra glove.

€100 each The Manus is not the first data glove.

‘But it is the first one that’s affordable’, says Industrial Design alumnus Stijn Stumpel. One glove can’t be more than €100 - so then a max cost of €200 for a set.

p in the market vs.

Ga vision for the future The data glove has a different appeal for everyone. In addition to making wearable technology, Stumpel is especially interes­ted in making further advancements in the virtual reality field.

‘VR and the Manus are part of a vision that is a lot closer to becoming a reality than many people think.’

More than VR Manus was initially developed to control characters in VR games. Nevertheless, the team wants to keep all its options open for the glove’s use. Vlemmix: ‘Once augmented reality becomes a big thing, we want to be able to respond to that demand.’ It could even be possible to control a drone or use household appliances. ‘And think about operating machinery in a factory - in that sort of an environment, a glove could be very valuable’, adds Stumpel.

www.manusmachina.com

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memo/

TU/e dean rector in Tilburg Emile Aarts, who was the dean of TU/e’s Mathematics and Com­puter Science Department until last June, has been appointed as the rector magnificus of Tilburg University.

Aarts gained managerial expe­ rience from both Philips Research Laboratories and TU/e and has been praised by students and colleagues for his innovative thinking in the management field.

As of 1 September, Jakob de Vlieg will be the new dean of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department and a professor of Applied Data Science at TU/e. De Vlieg has worked as a senior R&D manager at Bayer, Organon and Schering-Plough.

He was also a part-time professor of computational chemistry in Nijmegen.

A new ice-cold challenge: Da Vinci bridge constructed from ice After constructing an ice dome and an ice chapel, an international group of students will build an ice bridge in the Finnish Juuka this coming winter.

The bridge will be a hundred meters long with a free span of fifty meters. The team was inspired by a design by Leonardo da Vinci. About a hundred students and volunteers will leave the Netherlands this winter and head to the Finnish Juuka to build this huge bridge. Construction of the bottom layer will begin in Finland at the end of December and the entire bridge should be ready by mid-February, 2016. In addition to TU/e, the universities of Delft, Twente, Leuven, Aalto, Ghent, Bath, Edinborough

and St. Peterburg will be involved in the construction. www.facebook.com/bridgeinice

Spinoza Prize for TU/e professor René Janssen University Professor René Janssen was awarded the prestigious NWO Spinoza prize. The Spinoza Prize, which has been awarded annually since 1995, is the highest Dutch science award and includes a €2.5 million grant to spend on research.

René Janssen is an expert in the field of organic (plastic) solar cells and electronics. He expects to devote a part of the money to his principal line of research: plastic solar cells. He also wants to invest in his research on making solar fuels and solar cells based on perovskite.

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

DIFFER on the Dommel In May, the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) took up residence in its brand-new premises on TU/e’s campus. The institute’s physical proximity facilitates the already-existing cooperation between DIFFER and TU/e.

For example, fusion experts Marco de Baar and Tony Donné have already begun as part-time professors at the university, like their colleague DIFFER director Richard van de Sanden. In addition, DIFFER employees can benefit from TU/e’s facilities and vice-versa - DIFFER’s experimental set-ups and workplace are also open for use by TU/e researchers.

DIFFER’s research is divided into two themes: nuclear fusion and solar fuels.

The institute contributes in various ways to the preparation of ITER, the experimental fusion reactor currently housed in the Cadarache research center in the south of France.

Dutch Engineers Alumni Nordic Tour

4,408 kilometers, more than 1,000 local alumni, 160 participants, 8 speakers + 4 cities = the Dutch Engineers Alumni Nordic Tour. In May 2015, several activities were held in Scandinavia for alumni of TU Delft, the University of Twente and TU/e. The three Dutch universities organized the Dutch Engineers Alumni Nordic Tour in cooperation with the local Dutch Embassies in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Program activities took place in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki. One of the main goals of the tour was to strengthen the link between the universities and their alumni - for instance, by encouraging them to visit their alma mater when they’re in the Netherlands. Approximately 160 alumni - 30 from TU/e - participated in the Dutch Engineers Alumni Nordic Tour.

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FRONTRUNNER/

He’s irritated by the tendency to compartmentalize that he encounters here sometimes. The world is, in fact, not as black and white as many people like to believe, as he experienced during his five years leading the OMA’s (Office of Metropolitan Architecture) Asian branch in China. TU/e alumnus David Gianotten is back in Rotterdam and now the managing partner-architect at OMA. While seated in front of a traditional cabinet from Hong Kong, he explains why a good architect needs to have much more than architectural insight. ‘I want to understand the people sitting across from me.’

David Gianotten Managing partner-architect at OMA

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FRONTRUNNER/

TeXt Enith Vlooswijk PHotos Vincent van den Hoogen

D

things, we would’ve snagged a job that would’ve delivered fifteen years of work. You don’t make a mistake like that twice.’

Always looking for the question behind the question

David Gianotten doesn’t try to hide his mistakes.

‘Of course, there have been times I’ve fallen flat on my face’, he says quietly. ‘Our success is partly based on making mistakes.’ The managing partner of the country’s most famous architectural firm can safely admit his missteps because the facts speak for themselves: during the five years he led OMA’s China branch the number of employees blossomed from 12 to about 100. The company built a portfolio of high-profile buildings such as the Performing Arts Centre in Taipei and Gianotten coordinated the completion of the Chinese state television headquarters in Beijing.

No one could blame him for occasionally dropping the ball. He learned from his mistakes.

Noteworthy

‘We had made a design for the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong’, he says, illustrating his point. ‘Our design was very grassroots, aimed at the area’s users, so we already had public opinion on our side. Even our competitors thought our proposal was the best. And yet we didn’t get the contract because we hadn’t correctly estimated the interests of the political client. This project was a real showcase for them and that needed to also be made clear in the design. Foster & Partners, and local competitors, who had understood that need were the ones to get the commission. If we had paid more attention to the political side of

‘Nothing is impossible.

But that’s something different than saying the sky is the limit.

The idea is that you should go full-throttle towards achieving your ideas.’

‘I think many people have lost their faith in architecture as being a critical contribution to society.

Architecture is much more than a kind of decorum.’

‘Inventiveness and criticism are inseparable.

If everything always goes smoothly, you won’t become critical or inventive.’

Gianotten has been back in the Netherlands now for a good six months. In the corner of his Rotterdam office, there’s a wooden, black and red cupboard that contrasts strangely with the sleek models sitting on top of it. ‘I brought it with me from Hong Kong.

I bought it there so we’d also have Chinese elements in our office. That was important for our customers.”

It’s an illustration of how he views his field: in order to design good architecture, architects must empathize with the expectations and needs of their clients.

An OMA design needs to offer more than what the client has asked for. ‘We always look for the question behind the question. For example, we were requested to design three big theaters next to each other for the Taipei Performing Arts Centre. When we went to the area to look around, we noticed that the most popular night market in town was there. According to the client, those lively ‘low culture’ places needed to move out of the area to make room for ‘high culture’.

However, we created a design that connects these two worlds. Now, anyone can enter the building and see how it operates, even without a ticket.’

Understanding the needs of clients requires much more than technical skills and attention to architectural design. During his time in Eindhoven,

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

David Gianotten’s Career David Gianotten (1974) is managing partnerarchitect of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), founded by the architect Rem Koolhaas. Gianotten led OMA’s Asian projects from their office in Hong Kong between 2009 until the beginning of this year.

Under his leadership, OMA built a portfolio of impressive structures in China, such as the Performing Arts Centre

Gianotten was already guided by the desire to gain additional skills. Instead of simply following the Department of the Built Environment’s curriculum, he dreamed up his own plan.

‘It was very important for my development that I could also take courses from other disciplines things I thought were important for my area of expertise: business principles, the social aspects of design, the way people use a room, language proficiency. I really want to understand the people sitting across from me. Clients are often not trained for that task, but they want their ideas to be heard.

You need to have the necessary social skills in order to reflect on their ideas.’

It’s certainly true in China, where the customer is usually closely involved in the design process.

‘If I design something for Shell, I’d rarely have the chairman of the board in my office. But when we designed the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the boss

‘Innovation moves much faster in the Chinese architectural world’

in Taipei, Shenzhen’s Trade Center and Chinese state television’s headquarters in Beijing.

Before he joined OMA in 2008, he was the managing director of SeArRC. He studied in the Department of the Built Environment at TU/e and graduated in 1998.

Gianotten is married and has two children.

showed up to our weekly meetings to help make critical decisions. The Western approach is to give specialists a lot of responsibility and then to discuss the design towards the end. In Asia, there’s less significance placed on specialism and expertise there it’s more about what are your ideas and how do you want to achieve them?’

This way of doing things has implications not only for the design process, but also for decisions made prior to the assignment. There aren’t any of the complicated procurement procedures like in Europe. ‘In the West, we think it’s important that everyone has an equal opportunity to get a contract.

In that vein, clients particularly look at experience: what have you built in the past? That experience can also be useful in Asia in order to be invited to pitch your ideas but you won’t be judged solely on your past accomplishments. The conversation will be more about your ideas - what do you have to offer now?

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FRONTRUNNER/

‘The absence of regulated procurement procedures makes the Asian system susceptible to corruption, admits Gianotten.

But he’d prefer not to criticize that system.

In fact, he gets visibly annoyed with westerners who do. ‘I spent five years working hard to understand that culture and to find my place in it. And I succeeded. There are plenty of companies that don’t because they only want to work from their own modus operandi.

The world is not black and white: democracy or non-democracy, east or west, north or south.

I understand that people want to hold onto those dichotomies, but that’s not how the world works.

Moreover, the Asian approach has one major advantage that Europe could learn from: even young people, who haven’t built up impressive portfolios yet, get a chance to realize their ideas there. This makes the architectural world more innovative.

‘The context is so different: in Europe, we look at what we’ve already done. In Asia, it’s about what’s needed now: they’ve got a lot of catching up to do so innovation has to go faster. I’m not saying that one of the two methods is better, just different.’

Welcome back to the land of complainers

His promotion to managing partner took him from ‘construction-site China’ to ‘construction-crisis Holland’. He needs to reintegrate all over again. He’s not discouraged by the low-key mood in the construction world.

‘We’re a nation of complainers’, he says, laughing, ‘that’s no different than when I left. It’s only the topic that’s changed.’

Gianotten sees opportunities for change, especially for young people who don’t believe in traditional patterns for doing things.

Only building upon what’s come before doesn’t really work anymore. ‘Procedures have the upper hand here - they direct all of our expectations. Instead of thinking that a priori ideas are impossible and push them aside, I think you need to follow your ideas with full conviction and then later possibly make adjustments.’

When asked what lessons he learned in Asia could be used here, he thinks for a moment.

‘I didn’t learn any tricks in Asia, no methods I can apply elsewhere’, he says slowly, ‘but my manner for finding solutions has been enriched. If you want to innovate, you have to be open to other ways of thinking and then you need do something with that knowledge.’

He misses this open attitude sometimes in the Netherlands. ‘People who say, for example, that newcomers need to adapt, forget that everyone needs to adapt to the society as it is.’ Gianotten thinks architecture can play a role in the integration process.

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

‘Architecture has a unifying function.

Architects can create public spaces and buildings where people can meet from all cultures and all walks of life. Interaction is the key to integration.’

He spent several years as a visiting professor at Hong Kong University.

In the Chinese academic system, he encouraged students to consider what their own unique contributions to architecture could be. Now that he’s back in the Netherlands again, he’d like to fulfill a similar role for Dutch students, perhaps in Eindhoven. Although at the time he chose TU/e for mostly practical reasons - his family is from Brabant and he could keep playing football at a high level - he looks very fondly back on his university time.

‘People saw that I had my own agenda: I wanted to be an architect, but I wanted much more in my bag of tricks than just design techniques. Deans and teachers helped me gain these skills and that was a lot of fun for me. A university is not an extension of school, but rather a place where you can form your ideas and knowledge. That concept was obvious at TU/e.’

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alumni/

TeXt Norbine Schalij en Tiny Poppe PHotoS Bart van Overbeeke, private archives AND archiVE tu/e

60 years of education at TU/e From one-way traffic between professor and student to design-oriented education to broadcasted lectures in the Bachelor College - TU/e’s style of education has changed a lot over the last sixty years. And also the way students look while getting that education has kept up with the times; from all buttoned up in their suits to shorts and flip-flops.

Slash spoke with seven alumni about ‘modern’ lectures, Italian lessons and the arrival of digitization.

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

Frans van Empel (1943) Graduated in: 1971 Studied: Electrical Engineering

‘Professors were almost gods’ ‘A day at the university began in the morning with a lecture given by a professor, followed in the afternoon by a practicum or instruction provided by a research assistant’, remembers Frans van Empel from the days when he studied electrical engineering at the then Technical College (Technische Hogeschool). ‘During the lecture, there were about 100 students in the classroom listening to the professor.

We’d then get a detailed explanation of the lecture’s content during the instruction in the afternoon. Sometimes, that explanation was desperately needed because the lectures weren’t very good. You could practice the information from the lectures by doing assignments which were actually sample tests. During the practicums, you had to perform a specified experiment and then write-up a report.

He remembers the big distance between professors and students at that time. ‘When the professor came in, everyone stood up and it was absolutely silent in the room. You certainly never asked him a question and you never called him by his first name. The interaction between student and professor was very formal and distant. Professors were almost like gods. If you had to do an oral exam, you arrived in a blue suit and then everyone knew: that one’s in for a rough time.

He looks back fondly on his time as a student assistant when he designed the forerunner of today’s ‘clickers’ with Prof. J.A. Poulis. The professor wanted to determine with this so-called ‘misunderstanding meter’ if students caught on to content of the lectures. He wanted to prevent students from having to do a second examination. Laughing, he thinks back to the first prototype. ‘It consisted of wooden clothes pegs with the electrodes connected to each other by means of a cord.

After the professor had asked an ‘unambiguous’ question that could only be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the students had to press the clothespin and got his ‘feedback’. Yes, that was a fun time.’

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alumni/

Van de Ven remembers that his education took place in the form of lectures, instruction and practicums. Practical sessions for electrical engineering occurred in the E-hoog laboratories. But practicums for physics like experiments with light and light measurements were done in the Hoofdgebouw.

Mari van de Ven (1945) Graduated in: 1973 Studied: Electrical Engineering

Examinations in parishes Mari van de Ven was an electrical engineering student when the Auditorium opened on April 27, 1966. The commissioning of that building put an end to the lack of space for lectures at the Technical College. In 1965, electrical engineering students had lectures in E-hoog and the Paviljoen, but also in the center of Eindhoven - in the old Augustinianum (high school, ed.) and the Chapel, both on Canal Street. During his first years, Van de Ven took exams in various locations in the city; for example, in the ballroom of a dance school, in a Catholic church’s auditorium and several parishes. ‘After the Auditorium opened, we took our exams there - on Saturday mornings - and also had lectures and got instruction there.’

No rush to graduate

‘Lectures were given in the morning. After an ‘academic quarter hour’, the professor began a two-hour lecture. The next subject started after a fifteen-minute break. The professor recited his lecture and the students had to listen, or at least be quiet. The lecture notes were excellent; the professor followed them almost literally. With those notes, you could prepare for the lecture or follow it independently, if you couldn’t go in anymore because you were late. Because if you were late, you had to wait outside or in the canteen until you could jump in at the break.

Sometimes there was a doorman who kept watch.’

The electrical engineering alumnus says his teachers were experts in their field. ‘But when it comes to giving lessons, sometimes they were lacking. There were professors at those big lecture halls that only looked at their scientific colleagues sitting in the front row. They had almost no regard for the students who were often sitting further away in the hall.’

Students wore mostly suits or a combination of trousers and jacket.

‘There were professors who made remarks when a student came in sweater.’

After his training at the HBS-B, Mari van de Ven had to get used to the pace and academic semesters at TU/e. Fortunately, he got a lot of support from classmates. ‘There was a mentoring system in the electrical engineering department where approximately ten students met regularly with two supervisors. We got to know each other and helped one another. As they say, two heads are better than one.’

Magdaleen Kroese (1959) Graduated in: 1988 Studied: Architecture

‘My studies were so much fun’, says Magdaleen Kroese. My first year consisted of half practical assignments and half lectures. She attended those lectures every morning in the Auditorium and did her design and drawing tasks in the afternoon at Paviljoen.

Architecture students were divided into groups of twenty students; eighteen boys and two girls. That group stayed together under the name P-studio and with the name of their supervisor. Kroese was in Harrie Janssen’s P-studio.

After her first year, Kroese chose her major; architectural design.

‘We did two projects a year and dedicated every afternoon to them.

The assignment might be ‘design a new shopping strip’ and you’d

chose your own subject to focus on.’ Kroese chose secondary subjects such as philosophy, Italian (lots of credits) and psychology of the built environment. The education was in Dutch and only occasionally used books in English.

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Frietjhof Croon (1970) Graduated in: 1995 Studied: Industrial Engineering

‘I never experienced any barriers’ During Frietjhof Croon’s time studying industrial engineering, the style of education consisted of morning lectures and afternoon practicums.

‘The morning lectures were sometimes attended by as many as 300 people so I didn’t attend them too often - sometimes because I’d often stay out late the night before and also because the lectures were mostly a simple recitation of the syllabus. The lectures didn’t really do much for me. I thought this type of education was too one-directional and passive’, says Frietjhof Croon more than 20 years after leaving TU/e.

‘We calculated sums under the guidance of student assistants in the math practicum, once drew a nude model in Slothouber and Dubbelman’s drawing practicum and, in architectural design, we once had to sculpt a house out of a lump of clay that expressed the concept of mass.’ According to Kroese, many of her assignments were approached philosophically. ‘My design supervisor was Professor Gerard van Zeijl and he deliberately spoke cryptically. He assumed that you had already mastered the theory of architecture.’

‘The bachelor’s degree took three years and then you could graduate one year after that. That didn’t happen too often.’ Students in the 80s knew there weren’t many jobs up for grabs in the architecture world.

‘Maybe that’s why we weren’t really in a hurry to graduate.’

‘The afternoon practicums were much more interactive. I thought it was much more interesting and instructive to work together with your fellow students in small groups. I learned how to collaborate with others and if I had questions, I could ask them right away. You couldn’t do that so easily in a lecture. I learn best when I can work directly with the subject matter - learning only theory isn’t very useful for me.’

He remembers that starting in his third year, the lectures in electives such as International Production and Logistics and Purchasing Management with Arjan van Weele were much smaller, more interactive and interesting. ‘Those classes really appealed to me so I always went to them.’

He thinks back fondly on the strategic BRAVO project (Brabants Transport and Shipper Research) during his graduation year.

The project involved 20 students from diverse disciplines, eight scientists, 150 shippers and 150 logistics service providers. ‘It was the first time that so many parties participated in a graduation project. I learned a lot: particularly how to work with a large group of people from different companies and disciplines. Because of that large group and the strategic importance of the project, I felt much more responsible; other people were depending on me. It wasn’t just a good time, but also a great way to finish my studies and a very good preparation for going into the work world.’

Croon is enthusiastic about the pleasant and open contact between students and faculty at TU/e. ‘I could always knock on anyone’s door; whether it was about subjects and lab work or internships and graduation. I never experienced any barriers, not even with professors.

They were always very busy and frequently absent, but you could always make an appointment with them.’

As an architect, Kroese thinks there could’ve been a better link between her studies and practicing architecture in the real world. ‘After graduation, I could immediately call myself an architect and go to work. But I never learned what it means to work for a client.

In the real world, you have to deal with time constraints, budget and users.

I could almost say I was trained as an artist, not as someone who would be paid and then had to deliver something in return. I had no idea how to calculate fee.

I eventually learned that from a report by the BNA, the trade association for Dutch architects.’

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alumni/

From floppy to TU/e laptop

Sander Holm (1972) Graduated in: 2000 Studied: Architecture

When Sander Holm began his studies in 1990, he was the proud owner of an XT computer with a hard drive of 20 MB. TU/e’s computers were still using floppies and didn’t have hard drives. Most students wrote reports by hand.

Just a few years later, everybody had their own faster PC and it was normal to hand in printed reports. ‘I experienced the turning point in digitization. It started with a small role for computers and ended with their complete domination. Starting in 1997, it even became standard for freshmen to use a laptop provided

by TU/e. The first email addresses began only in 1994. Holm thought the rate of digitization was fantastic. ‘I realized how fast it was going.

It was great! I love innovation.’

Holm experienced a lot of changes during his years at TU/e. He saw the arrival of the OV-card, performance-based loans were implemented and his own study path was extended by an additional academic year.

‘I started a four-year degree but because I hadn’t finished some things on time, I ended up in the new five-year degree program.

I had to re-do the new version of some computer-related subjects, such as AutoCAD, even though I’d already passed them. Adapting my curriculum was sometimes unclear but I could always go to an academic advisor for help.’

Holm was among the last batch before the performance-based loans came into effect.

He received six years of student grants with

no obligations other than he had to success­ fully complete his first-year courses within two years. ‘We had more time to figure out what we wanted in life. It was easier to switch majors and we had time for board positions.

It wasn’t just about ‘long live the fun’. The extra time gave Holm the time to set up the student sport club All Terrain and to be active in various committees at SSRE. Holm’s thinks the best type of education he experienced was the teamwork in, for example, Building Technology. You had get along with group members who wanted to do things differently than the majority. Then you had to decide what to do with that person’s contribution. And I now know that experiences comes close to the reality of what you have to do when you actually work in architecture.

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

Carlijn Compen (1983) Graduated in: 2007 Studied: I ndustrial Design, first batch of students

‘I was happy to be a guinea pig’ Carlijn Compen was among the first 70 students who started in the Industrial Design program. On the ground floor of the Hoofdgebouw in the Studiolab, they got to know each other well and watched their faculty grow in numbers. ‘We kept taking over more and more floors.’

Compen was happy to be a guinea pig. ‘We had no classes and no exams but lots of project work and individual assignments. There were lots of coaches from the business world. From day one, I was working on a project for a real client. That was the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.’ She felt like she’d been thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool and says it was a huge culture shock to go from her structured and highly-theoretical secondary school in Belgium to TU/e, ‘but it was a positive culture shock. I had been looking for a practical type of education. At the university’s open day, there wasn’t really anything to see and Studiolab was still a building site.

But I did see some interesting people.

There wasn’t much interaction between ID and other faculties - only with Architecture because they shared a studio in Vertigo. Compen regrets that she couldn’t take classes in other programs. ‘Other subjects seemed very interesting. I think it would also work well the other way around - mechanical engineering students could learn from ID how you can discover users’ needs. I understand that it’s now possible to do this in the Bachelor College.’

Compen never had a math class at TU/e. ‘I also didn’t miss it. If it had been necessary, then I could have arranged it. I feel like I didn’t learn anything that was useless, but rather just the things that I needed.’

ID did everything differently from the other departments. Compen emphasizes that she can only talk about her own experiences in the ID program, ‘because a lot has changed’ - like the grading system, for example. A competency framework had been devised for grading.

After a half year of training on projects and assignments, you didn’t receive a grade but a letter. For the first batch of ID’ers, that was a P (pass), a Q (questionable), or an N (not pass, which meant you had to do the half year all over again). Later, an N* was used for students who didn’t make it, but still got a chance to try again. ‘I was on the faculty board and I remember that the grading system was often on the agenda.’

The idea to give students vacation days was another thing that changed.

‘We were called junior employees and we were expected to work a 40-hour week. The full-time workweek was definitely in practice but the idea to give us vacation days never really worked.’

20

alumni/

Learning to work together during Honors Academy

Onno Kuip (1988) Graduated in: 2012 Studied: Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences (Master Innovation Management)

During Onno’s time at TU/e, ‘design-based learning’ (in Dutch: Ontwerp Gericht Onderwijs (OGO), ed.) were the magic words. In this new form of education introduced around 2000, students work together on design projects in multidisciplinary teams, so that they can later apply this experience to their profes­ sional lives after graduation. The idea is that the traditional model of education with lectures, tutorials and practicums is no longer delivering the type of engineers demanded by industry.

In addition to many lectures - especially in the first year - studying on his own and supervised work hours, Kuip spent a lot of time working in groups as a result of this new teaching method. ‘The assignments taught you how to apply the information from the lectures to practical cases. A good example is the logistical optimization of a brewery, where the supply of products is tailored to market demand. I’ve since learned that working together in a group in a professional setting is very different. Unlike your fellow students, you can more easily call your colleagues to account. I learned the most about cooperating with other disciplines during my time in the Honors Academy; more than during design-based learning. That’s where I solved a chemistry problem with a physics student, for example, and truly learned how to switch topics and communicate with someone from another field.’

Broadcasting lecture s of basic courses

Looking back, Kuip praises TU/e for its good research and teaching, but does see areas that could use some improvement. ‘You’re analytical skills become highly developed but you learn (too) little about yourself what you’re good at, what you want, your motives, and where your talents lie. As far as those things are concerned, you’re at ground zero after you graduate. Personal development should be an integral part of your studies. Even if you work in a group, you should reflect on what went well and what didn’t. That’s how you can develop yourself as a person and you’ll also need that as an engineer in the course of your career. Now that I’m a trainee with ORMIT, I really notice it.’

Kuip says the teachers radiated authority because of their knowledge, but student-teacher contact was good and easy. ‘The distance was greater with professors. If you had to have a conversation with a professor, you needed to be prepared. When they noticed that you’d really dived into the subject matter, they were very helpful and cordial.

However, we students weren’t always too respectful with the teachers, because we were usually more focused on our laptops and cell phones than on the lectures.’

In the Bachelor College, all students take basic subjects: Ma thematics, Natural Sciences, Model ling, Design, User, Society & Enterpri se and Professional skills. These courses catering to 1,400 (2012) or 1,700 (2014) freshmen requir e a massive amount of organization . For example, Applied Sciences was sta rted in 2012 with a trial class held by lecturer Richard Engeln in Audit orium’s open space. Seven hundred students (the first portion) watch ed him impale a balloon with a bow and arrow.

For huge lectures, the roo ms in Auditorium are too sm all; in 2014, one million euros was inv ested to digitally link lectures to a second room where students and instructors could see each other thr ough a screen.

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22 23

In focus/

Tissue Sections Text Tom Jeltes photo UMC Utrecht / Biomedical Image Analysis

In order to make a diagnosis and determine the optimal treatment for cancer patients, doctors remove a piece of tissue, called a biopsy. A micrometers-thick slice of this tissue is then placed under the microscope.

The section is stained with special dyes in order to make cells more visible.

The digitized microscopic image can be magnified (see box). A pathologist then attempts to determine the severity of the tumor on the basis of tissue characteristics such as the size and shape of the cells and how much the cells have divided.

TU/e’s Medical Image Analysis group has developed computer algorithms that can perform this analysis more quickly and accurately. The automaticallydetected nuclei are indicated in green. Based on this information, the size of the cells can be automatically determined.

Computers can analyze large amounts of information more quickly than the doctor and are also able to objectively combine different types of information in order to arrive at a balanced prognosis.

The box shows an image

magnified

40x

24 25

Smart mobility/

Smart Mobility: smarter, safer, better

TeXt Nicole Testerink PHotoS Bart van Overbeeke AND Smart Mobility

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

Mobility gives us a lot of freedom and a good quality of life. But there are also certain negative aspects to moving people and goods from one place to another: accidents, traffic network congestion and pollution. According to Carlo van Weijer, the driving force behind TU/e’s strategic area Smart Mobility, we can virtually eliminate those problems in the near future through the use of technology. And getting from point A to B will become smarter, safer and better.

A

s long as there have been cars, we’ve dreamed of autonomous driving. At the World’s Fair in 1917, people predicted that the first autonomous cars would appear on the road within 20 years.

And the story is still the same today. Recent reports about the Google Car have inspired predictions that we’ll all soon be ‘driving’ robot cars without steering wheels. ‘Autonomous driving speaks to the imagination’, says Carlo van Weijer, director of TU/e’s strategic area Smart Mobility and also vice-president of TomTom Traffic Solutions. ‘I think it’s fairly certain that within a few years we’ll be able to drive hands-free during large chunks of our trips; that would help make mobility safer and cleaner.’ But there are other areas of the transportation system that are now rapidly changing the world of mobility - for example, the increased use of bicycles and the advent of services like Uber, which Van de Weijer thinks are more impactful than the robot car. He once again stresses that Smart Mobility is much more than the oft-celebrated autonomous car.

‘The strategic area Smart Mobility is incredibly relevant for society. We’re conducting problemsolving research by combining different areas of competency. Indeed, TU/e is quite strong in the field of autonomous driving and we’re extensively researching autonomous transport systems, vehicle communication and environmental perception. Smart Mobility is about minimizing mobility’s adverse effects on multiple fronts. Safety is an important issue; the fact that cars create accidents is a bigger problem than daily traffic jams, despite the fact that the worst traffic jams are often caused by accidents. We’re working on more efficient logistics: fewer empty semi-trucks, smarter planning, better route information. A savings

of 1% adds up when we’re talking about an industry - in European terms - that does seven hundred billion Euros of sales per year. And we’re researching new fuels and the reduction of emissions so that cars become greener.

But Smart Mobility is also concerned with the question of how to accelerate the adoption of new technology and how we’ll go about making the transition from traditional driving to autonomous driving. Or we look at how you can lay out cities in order to prevent mobility problems.

Such a model could provide insight into the issues affecting existing cities.’

Thanks to e-bikes people cycle twice as far ‘We see that there’s a clear shift towards individual mobility. In the future, driving will get cheaper and it’ll be less harmful to people and the environment through technological improvements. Individual mobility doesn’t necessarily have to mean ‘alone in the car’: it could also be a taxi with driver. We shouldn’t cling too much to a particular concept - it can sometimes be very refreshing to change how we think about things. For example, what about an e-bike? Thanks to the electric motor, people are inclined to bike about twelve kilometers to their jobs; more than twice as far than without power. So, you also save on costs to society because, on average, people stay fitter. We can possibly overcome the current increase in bicycle accidents by borrowing techniques from the automotive industry. We’re also currently working on that. In addition, we’re increasingly covering more kilometers in our travels; on a logarithmic scale, you can see that there’s been a constant rise throughout

history. According to mobility experts, the momentum in growth has mostly occurred in flight travel - the frontrunners cover more kilometers by plane than by car. TU/e can play a role in this trend with our research into sustainable fuels.’

‘Security and privacy are also major challenges in our field. Because of digitization things change much faster than people can keep up with.

Everything with an IP address is hackable, and that includes our cars which are increasingly turning into a driving computers. We hope our university will be a leader in these uncertain times and will generate innovative ideas.’

‘Tomorrow’s breakthrough is today’s ‘weird’ idea’ ‘Fresh ideas come from the new generation.

I’ve seen it firsthand as the administrator of TU/e’s student teams. They’re comprised of motivated students with talent, ambition and ‘weird’ ideas. But take heed: tomorrow’s breakthrough is today’s strange idea so we’re open to all new ideas. Such a team is a fantastic vehicle to carry out our mission and also an excellent opportunity for collaboration with industry. And for the students, it’s a link to the future reality. Therefore, I challenge companies to get involved with such a team in one way or another - whether it’s direct sponsorship or testing components, it’s a win-win situation.

Soon, established frameworks within Smart Mobility will be knocked down and young people who can think outside of the box will be essential.’

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Smart mobility/

Professor Henk Nijmeijer’s Dynamics & Control group is doing a lot of research into new forms of driving. You can think of the autonomous car, but Nijmeijer also sees more opportunities for cooperative driving in the near future.

A

sk the average person on the street about the future of driving and the majority will tell you about the Google Car or a similar robot car. Not surprising, says Nijmeijer. ‘Cars and humans are tightly linked and the image of a robot car is a strong one for most people. Still, I think that autonomous driving - a world with robot cars - is still a long ways off in the future. Many developments are currently taking place in cooperative driving.

Imagine a train driving on the road - that’s what it would be like with a platoon of semi-trucks.

There’d be a driver only in the lead vehicle and

‘Our cars are increasingly becoming driving computers’ the rest of the trucks would follow passively behind. These sorts of systems could poten­ tially enter the market much more quickly.

There are already car manufacturers that offer cooperative adaptive cruise control which allows two cars to be wirelessly connected; if you hit the breaks in the front car, the following car will react in a split second.’

‘Nobody pays for safety or mobility’ ‘Public roads in the Netherlands would be an excellent place for cooperative driving. I can imagine some great advantages. Because of the faster response times of connected cars, we’d create extra safety for the driver. The vehicles can drive closer together which creates better flow and, therefore, reduces traffic jams. Fuel consumption and emissions would be much lower which would be particularly important in the transport sector. I expect cooperative driving will first be introduced in the transport world. It would be worth the investment to create convoys of trucks on the highway at night.

Nobody pays for safety or mobility but fuel reduction is felt immediately in the wallet.

Regardless of what governments might do, we need to focus on creating an interesting scenario for the transportation industry.

New technologies emerging from this sector could flow into the passenger transportation world.

‘We’ve been working on cooperative driving for a long time already at TU/e. We’re now focusing on a number of aspects such as automatic steering. We can already handle a driver with no legs, but steering movements are much more complex. And, of course, vehicle commu­nication is very important but we also have to take into account the roadside. Cameras and image analysis play an essential role in this sort of communication. And we also see that the car is increasingly becoming a mobile computer.

What do you do if you lose your wifi and how do you prevent someone from trying to control your car from a distance? We’re working internationally on a number of major projects, such as the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge, to help get cooperative driving on the right track.

And here in our region, we’re hoping to collaborate with businesses and municipalities to run a train of electric cars between TU/e, the station and the Automotive Campus in Helmond to run.

We’re all already familiar with the image of a driver reading a newspaper at the wheel - how nice would it be if we could soon replace that image with our car train?’

For more information about the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge, go to http://www.gcdc.net/

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

In order to move autonomous or cooperative vehicles in the right way, it’s essential to properly observe the car’s environment. In the Electrical Engineering Department, Gijs Dubbelman is exploring how you can build an image of the environment based on camera images.

Smart camera images show the autonomous car the road

G

ijs Dubbelman regularly drives on the highway, around the city or on TU/e’s campus with special camera equipment.

The recorded images - linked with accurate vehicle information and GPS coordinates form the basis for improving a vehicle’s environmental perception. Based on these

An image of cyclists as detected by a camera. This is the work of Dubbelman and Willem Sandberg.

observations, an autonomous or cooperative vehicle creates a digital world model so that it can decide which way it should drive from point A to point B. That’s not only about choosing the right route, but also about avoiding obstacles.

You can imagine that a drive around Eindhoven would yield a very complex dataset.

‘The trick is to get more and more meaningful information from the automotive sensors’, explains Gijs Dubbelman. ‘A constructed image of the environment needs to include three-dimensional information so that distances between obstacles are clear and you can see if that obstacle is a tree, car or bicycle. And preferably you want a vehicle to ‘understand’ that a cyclist with an outstretched left arm wants to cross the road to turn left. With this sort of research, you quickly fall into discussions about complex pattern recognition algorithms.

But they still need a lot of research before they can be used reliably. We hope to launch a significant project involving several collaborations to further this area of study. At this moment, our group is primarily concerned with how a vehicle would observe its environment and react in difficult circumstances. It should be able to survive in heavy rain or snow, and on unmarked country roads. This sort of research is moving us ahead one step further.’

28 29

Smart mobility/

Stella Lux: carefree driving in the family car of the future

Stella Lux, the energy-positive family car, was released in early July - a result of two years of fulltime work by 22 TU/e students. Solar Team Eindhoven (STE) wanted to show the world that solar cars and a comfortable ride could go together. This Fall, they’re taking their design on a world tour, starting with the World Solar Challenge in Australia.

I

magine never having to worry again that you’ll be stranded somewhere along the way thanks to an innovative system that decides how energy will be distributed throughout the day. Imagine also a connection with a digital agenda so that the system knows where to go the next day and how much charge the battery should have for the trip ahead. Central door lock release, based on smartphone detection. According to Solar Team Eindhoven, these are some of the features that make Stella Lux the family car of the future - a piece of durability combined with intelligence and comfort.

But the most revolutionary aspect of their latest solar car is the fact that it’s energy

positive: it generates more energy than it consumes. ‘It’s a new way of thinking about transportation,’ says Liselotte Kockelkoren, STE’s account manager. ‘It’s no longer purely about driving from A to B, but also about generating additional energy that can be supplied to the grid. The calculations were performed for the Netherlands for a full year, so an extreme amount of sun hours isn’t required to be able to drive in the plus.’

‘Although it’s important to design a fast car for the World Solar Challenge, it was clear to us that we wanted to go further with the idea of Stella, our previous four-person solar car.

Of course, a flat car with two domes has a greater chance of winning, but we want to

make a difference - show the world the next step in solar driving. That’s why we built a reliable, comfortable family car.’ When they won a Crunchie - the Oscar for Technology - for their solar car Stella earlier this year, STE knew that they’d made the right decision. ‘There’s a future in our car. And although there’s heavy competition in our class in the World Solar Challenge, we definitely have a good chance of defending our world title. And at the very least, we hope we can inspire a lot of people by showing new possibilities.’

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

Scientific education and research thrive within the automotive student teams. They develop and build various vehicles which they use to compete internationally with teams from other universities. TU/e currently has six active Automotive Student.

1

Smart Mobility & student teams

2

3

4

5

1. InMotion: a continuous learning track that combines MBO, HBO and universities in a project of dizzying proportions. InMotion’s goal was to build an electric racing car and to qualify for the Garage 56 competition during the 24hours of Le Mans in 2017. This competition is all about speed and it’s a platform for the latest technology. In the racing world, it’s as famous as the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, the ambitious students didn’t qualify for the 24hours. The team is looking at other options for racing their car.

2. Solar Team Eindhoven: The crowd favorite and a game changer in the biennial World Solar Challenge in Australia. In 2013, Solar Team Eindhoven introduced a four-seater car - ‘the first family car powered by solar energy’ - in order to participate in the class for family cars during the race through the outback. With an impressive vision and the realization of a car in just one year, the team went from nothing to standing on the world stage.

The new team is now ready to defend their title in October 2015 with Stella Lux.

3. TU/ecomotive: TU/ecomotive’s efficient city car participates every year in the Shell Ecomarathon. They’re students with a mission: attention for cleaner, more efficient and smarter cars. In May, 2015, the team presented Nova, the cleanest city car, during the AutoRAI. 4. URE: Electric racing - that’s what University Racing Eindhoven (URE) does.

Every year, a new team of students builds a race car to participate in an international student competition in Germany, Spain, Austria and England.

5. STORM: around the world in 80 days with an electric motor. The students from STORM will walk in the footsteps of Jules Verne by participating in the 80DR in 2017.

FAST (not in the picture): The latest and perhaps the most unique offering in the student teams in the field of automotive. They’ve had the idea to build a car on formic acid.

Liselotte Kockelkoren

30 31

alumni/

Alumni

as coaches for students Hey, Alumnus! Want to help students and young alumni with questions about their career? Now you can through the Alumni Coach Network, an online community where graduate students and young alumni are linked to experienced TU/e alumni. And in addition to this initiative, the Mechanical Engineering Department has made use of alumni to help introduce the engineering work world to second-year undergraduate students.

Student Ria Sijabat in a video conference with her coach, Ard Koeken.

TeXt Judith van Gaal PHoto Bart van Overbeeke

S

hould I enter the business world or go for a PhD? What are the best courses for me and which skills are important in the job market? These are the types of questions almost all students ask themselves at one time or another. In March, the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry launched a pilot project in which alumni serve as a resource for students and help them in their career orientation.

The pilot has now been rolled out to the rest of TU/e. Through an online network (tue.nl/ coachnetwork), students can choose from the alumni who have registered online as a coach. The alumnus coaches the student according to agreements they’ve made together. According to Ingrid de Kort, senior communications advisor for Alumni Relations, the idea for the Alumni Coach Network was conceived a while ago but the concept gained momentum last year with the start of the Graduate School’s Coaching, Guidance and Professional Skills project team. ‘Alumni are valuable ambassadors who can inspire new generations of students - our future engineers. They know better than anyone what it’s like to study at TU/e and to go out into the work world with an engineering diploma. The Alumni Coach Network is an accessible way to use alumni as coaches for our students.’

Sparring with an expert Ard Koeken is one of the alumni who registered as a coach for the pilot. He studied in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry from 1997 to 2003, did the PhD program and was a postdoctoral researcher at TU/e from 2007 to 2009. He now works as a research engineer at Dow Chemical. Koeken: ‘It seemed like a nice thing to do; it’s a good change of pace from my everyday life and it’s a good project to develop my ‘mentor side’.

I’ve always kept my link with academia and I’m interested in what moves students.

I’ve now had contact several times with two students and I have the idea that I’ve been able to help them find their way.’

Ria Sijabat is one of the two students.

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

She chose Ard Koeken as her mentor because he has experience as a PhD student and postdoc in the scientific world and is now active in the business world. ‘I’m not sure whether I should have an academic career or go work in a company. It’s a very difficult decision for me and Ard is helping me stepby-step to think about what I want instead of only thinking about what other people say I’m good at. One of those steps was to attend a business dinner and I’ve also talked to my professor about my options. The main purpose is to list, as much as possible, all the advantages and disadvantages of going into business versus getting a PhD. Because Ard lives in Terneuzen, we mainly have contact through Skype. The mentoring program has helped me more than I had expected.

Ard has helped me with my CV and he’s kept me on track thinking about what I want.’

Bart Hendriks wanted to mainly spar with an expert on which courses he should choose for his master’s program. He searched for common interests among the alumni profiles in the online network and his match appeared to be Ard Koeken. ‘We were both interested in catalysis, polymers and process technology.

We first emailed and then we talked four times via Skype - each time for more than an hour and half. Ard really helped me in choosing my courses. I find it particularly difficult to know which subjects will be best for my future. We also talked about what it’s like to work in a company - what’s expected of a chemical engineer, what are your tasks and what are the differences between companies? We’ve discussed virtually everything already but if I have more questions, I can always email him.’

The Mechanical Engineering Department has also asked alumni to become coaches, but then for second year bachelor’s students, and in a different way. Initiator Corinne Jongeneelen, the department’s program director, says: ‘We especially wanted to create more awareness among students: what kind of jobs are there for mechanical engineers, how can they develop themselves and how important is it to have a network?

The National Student Survey showed that students feel unprepared for the work world.

This initiative provides additional support in the selection process for the Bachelor’s degree and makes future prospects more concrete.’ A total of 40 alumni and about 130 students participated in the initiative and were linked to each other during speed dates.

What does the business world expect of you?

Later, most of the students had contact with their coach via Skype while some met them in person. At the end of the course, students exchanged their experiences. Bram Lomans, one of the participating students, was initially skeptical about the usefulness of the exercise, but now looks back on it as a very positive experience. During the speed date, he chose Jasper Winkes as his coach - TU/e alumnus and founder of the company Fistuca BV. ‘As a student, you don’t learn much about what it’s like to start your own business.

What does the business world expect of you?

Does everyone just look at your grades?

We met on campus and Jasper stressed how important it is to branch out beyond your studies. For example, if you need to manage welders, it helps if you know more about it.

I’m now planning to follow a welding course and I want to start tutoring in order to polish up my presentation skills. Talking to Jasper gave me just the extra push I needed.’

Would you also like to become a coach?

Are you an experienced alumnus/alumna (who graduated in about the last 25 years)?

Would you like to coach a master’s student and also develop your own coaching skills?

Then register via tue.nl/coachnetwork.

Young alumni can also register to be coached. Interested mechanical engineering alumni who’d like to coach second year undergraduate students can contact Corinne Jongeneelen via c.j.m.jongeneelen@tue.nl.

32 33

THE SPARK/

Where does a love for technology come from for TU/e professors: The Spark

Text JOEP HUISKAMP photos Bart van Overbeeke

How the Internet of Things

will not become an unpredictable mess

Antonio Liotta (47) has been holding the chair of Communication Network Protocols at the Department of Electrical Engineering since 2008. Born in Messina, Italy, he left his native island of Sicily to study in Pavia and Milan. He then moved to University College London for his Ph.D. In Eindhoven, his research focuses on an extremely relevant topic: smart communication protocols for massive-scale networks. In his view, the vastly expanding Internet (of Things) will break down if no new, biologically inspired communication mechanisms are implemented.

‘I have wanted to be a scientist ever since I was a teenager. Understanding how things work starts with curiosity. I was dismantling radio receivers and trying to reassemble them.

We had a teacher who was passionate about computers. After school, he taught us how to program in BASIC. Even though in ancient times Sicily was home to Archimedes, Sicilian universities are not very relevant when it comes to science. It has nothing to do with quality but due to their state funding policy it’s hard to make a scientific career. So I moved to the north of Italy to study. One of my professors advised me to make a choice: either do a Ph.D. in another country and stay there for good, or remain in Italy.

The perspective of staying in Italy did not appeal to me too much.

‘Anything can sense and generate data nowadays’ In Eindhoven, I am working on smart communications for the future of the Internet.

The new buzzword is ‘the Internet of Things’.

All kinds of objects have sensors. From tennis rackets to intelligent textiles, anything can

sense and generate data nowadays. We are talking one trillion things in the near future.

What kind of protocols are necessary to enable these trillion objects to connect?

The Internet was designed in the sixties and connections are established via wires traditionally. We are still working with these old protocols, while communication has become wireless and pervasive long since.

The Internet rewires much faster than our ability to observe it, and generates new unpredictable patterns. Why is that a problem?

Because the very basis of communication systems is the ability to make predictions, particularly on the source, destination, shape and volume of data traffic.

34 35

THE SPARK/

We don’t want the Internet to become a completely unpredictable, entangled and wireless mess. So we have to cope with some big challenges. With one trillion nodes, you need a nuclear power plant to produce the amount of battery power to communicate.

Another problem is interference. With current protocols, nodes explore the situation around them and then take turns transmitting.

But this approach will not work when there are a thousand sensors in one room.

They would spend all their energy and time trying to figure out when it’s their turn to communicate.

‘We are inspired by networks that exist in nature’ We look at new protocols that are based on machine learning. We are inspired by networks that exist in nature. A complete model of the brain does not exist, but some techniques that the brain uses are known informatics. Take machine learning. To play baseball, you have to learn to hit a ball with a bat. Your brain is not fast enough to compute the actual trajectory of the ball. You learn by trial and error. You try and you miss until you are able to strike once the brain has learnt how to anticipate the complex actioneffect relationships of the game. Communication systems today are as complex as biological systems such as the brain.

We need them to operate efficiently under unpredictable conditions. Machine Learning is the type of mathematics that is backing up this approach. This learning approach would be very efficient in a complex network.

It’s like Darwinistic evolution: if you have the ability to learn, you can adapt to a system that evolves continuously.

I wrote ‘The cognitive net is coming’, an article in IEEE Spectrum Magazine. I argued that the Internet would break down without biologically inspired routing. It proved to

be a controversial subject: reactions varied from ‘fantastic idea’ to ‘total nonsense’.

There were believers and nonbelievers.

I have touched on a controversial area that points to a distinctive paradigm shift.

Current Internet protocols are the simplest you can imagine, but they struggle when transmissions are pervasive and unreliable.

‘We need to go beyond the typical engineering approach to problems’ The Internet of Things is not just about supporting more connections and a higher volume of data. The challenge is to create reliable connections over unreliable communication links, and to achieve that in an energy and spectrum efficient fashion.

So we need to go beyond the typical ‘engineering approach’ to problems, which tends to be more pragmatic than visionary. Most of the current investments in upgrading the Internet involve adding servers or network capacity. Since that seems to have worked so far, why change the system into a learning network? Well, when you go from one billion to one trillion nodes and shift from predictable to unpredictable network patterns, you reach physical limitations. The deterministic nature of the current Internet cannot cope with complex network entangles, so it will surely collapse. To avoid that, we need a new set of protocols that cooperate rather than counteract, and have the ability to adjust autonomously as new traffic patterns appear.

To prove these new network concepts, we are working on tangible projects to make sure that our vision gets us on the right track.

We are after all a technical university!

We have completely reprogrammed a tiny, off-the-shelf sensor with a machine learning program that’s only 20KB in size. We dubbed it the anomaly detector. It can measure light and temperature in its direct environment and make sense of communication conditions

such as interference. In only a short period of observation, it learns patterns and how to discern normal situations from abnormal ones, without having any prior knowledge.

High-tech companies may not be interested in the theories of machine learning per se, but when we showed them a working prototype they were totally engaged in the technology.

a.liotta@tue.nl

The new FLUX building is so much better than Potentiaal, particularly as it facilitates unplanned communications among us.

The Eindhoven University of Technology is a good place to work, but we need more thirdparty funding . The university is supposed to generate ideas. Those ideas will attract resources. I think Europe should invest more money in fundamental, but smaller

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

projects. I have many ideas for projects.

In ten years’ time, I will probably have many more answers on how to tackle complex networks. And I would love to cooperate with biologists and neuroscientists to apply machine learning in other fields. We don’t know how the billions of neurons in the brain are connected, but we can determine what neurons are critical. We already have

an algorithm that can quickly calculate this.

I hope to be able to confront neuroscientists with this technique in the future.’

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5x1/

Greener polyurethane foam Polyurethane foam has various uses including in mattresses and to insulate homes.

Propylene oxide is one of the key building blocks of polyurethane foam. However, harmful chlorinecontaining substances are released during the production of this molecule.

Dulce Perez Ferrandez used gold to study new catalyst particles that could be used to make propylene oxide in a simpler way.

Because water is the main byproduct of this process, this alternative production method is much more environmentally-friendly than conventional methods.

Regulating protein activity with DNA Antibodies are proteins which are increasingly being used for the treatment of diseases such as cancer and chronic inflam­ matory reactions.

However, these therapies often have adverse side effects because the ‘target’ protein is also present in healthy cells. That’s why Brian Janssen investigated how you can control the activity of antibodies by using a DNA-based blocker. This blocker attaches to the antibody, thus making it harmless. By administrating a so-called trigger, the antibody can be activated selectively.

This method uses DNA in a special way: not as a carrier of genetic information, but as a molecular building block.

5X1 minute

Slash dug through the stack of mostrecent theses in order to highlight five for you. In five minutes, you can soak up information that would otherwise take you hours to plow through.

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Battery life in hybrid vehicles Hybrid electric vehicles use both a combustion engine and an electric battery.

The Toyota Prius and Mitsubishi Outlander are common examples of cars that use this technology, but there are also hybrid semi-trucks being developed that will make use of a battery. Battery life is essential to this technology’s success - a technology that could translate to 20% less CO2 emissions in 2020 in comparison to 1990. Thinh Hong Pham developed a control strategy that includes double clutch in order to achieve an optimum balance between fuel use and battery life. It’s an advancement that should make the purchase of hybrid trucks a viable option.

Recognizing algae automatically Algae are more important than most people realize, if only for the reason that they produce the majority of the oxygen we breathe.

In addition, measurements of algae in water also help to ensure the safety of the swimming water and to recognize dangerous algal bloom at an early stage.

Identifying, counting and sorting algae is currently done manually, but Allison Schaap developed a small device that can do it cheaper and faster. The device’s ‘heart’ is a small glass chip with tiny channels and (light) waveguides, which are affixed to the chip with a special laser.

Driving more safely and comfortably Comfort and safety are two essential characteristics of a car. Tom van der Sande did his part in adding to these two aspects by developing controllers for semi-active suspension and so-called steer-by-wire. He was looking for a happy medium between the soft suspension of a typical American car and the hard damping found in a fast sports car. With steer-by-wire, the car takes over the wheel in emergency situations in order to, for example, prevent the vehicle from flipping over. He also showed that security can be further enhanced by linking the damping system to the steering control.

38 28 39

Planner/Venturer

Both completed their studies at TU/e.

The planner chose the path most in line with his education. While the venturer went outside the boundaries of his.

Coloring outside the lines Already a little scientist as a child? Mwah, I didn’t have a chemistry set or a telescope. I was a good student and strong in math. I also loved to endlessly build with Legos and create new things.

I combined all of my sets until I had a fully working fairground attraction or robot, and never followed the book.

I considered three areas of study: physics, medicine and chemical engineering. It became a combination: biomedical engineering.

Though I had to get used to my new life in Eindhoven, I immediately knew I was in the right place in terms of the education.

In particular, I loved the courses in modeling, fluid dynamics and control theory.

In front of the class After my education, I wanted to be a high school teacher; I had already been a substitute teacher during my studies. However, the repetitiveness of the work really got to me. I did my research and internship with one of the big shots in the MRI field, Professor Marc Haacke in Michigan, and it was so much fun that I realized I wanted to learn more. I decided to do a PhD. A fellow graduate told me about a project in Nijmegen that was about using 3D ultrasound to estimate the stretch in the heart wall. I actually wanted to stay in Eindhoven but I took the risk – and afterwards it turned out to be the perfect move. In Nijmegen, I went from a ‘young and promising’ new graduate to a fullyfledged and mature researcher.

TeXt Monique van de Ven PHoto Bart van Overbeeke

Ultrasound In addition to X-ray, ultrasound has been, and remains, one of the work horses in the clinic. It’s better than other methods for cardiovascular applications. At first, I was more focused on the analysis of the ultrasound signals and images for various applications: the heart, blood vessels and skeletal muscles. Now I’m much more fundamental. My research lines have two sides: on the one hand, the fundamental development of new imaging techniques and on the other, the development of new methods based on the combination of - mechanical - models with 2D-4D ultrasound data. Experimental validation and translation to the clinic are important in these projects.

After I was made an assistant professor, I started organizing a real ultrasound lab, PULS/e - the first within BMT. I’m really proud of it. I also want my little ‘club’ to grow organically into a full-fledged research group.

Own power Every researcher needs a certain degree of intelligence, enthusiasm, skepticism and stubbornness. I think my defining characteristics are my creativity, analytical skills and my patience. Furthermore, I’ve always used my own strength as my basis.

It’s not always about performance. The most important thing is to develop yourself and excel in the things you’re good at and that you like to do. Nothing is worse than wasting your talents.

Chances During a PhD defense in Maastricht, I got to talking with Frans van de Vosse, my current supervisor and head of the group Cardiovascular Biomechanics. He was looking for a postdoc for a temporary position in Maastricht, where he was a part-time professor. Eventually, I moved with Frans to his own group.

I started setting up a number of studies during my postdoc and I wrote my first project application - and ended up getting a Veni grant.

PLANNER RICHARD LOPATA Age 35 Positions • Assistant professor at TU/e, Department of Biomedical Engineering, specializing in Cardiovascular Ultrasound & Modeling • Postdoc TU/e • Postdoc Maastricht University • PhD track, Radboud University Medical Center, ‘2D & 3D Ultrasound Strain Imaging (Methods & In Vivo Applications)’ Study • 1998-2004 Department of Biomedical Technology, TU/e

TeXt BRIGIT SPAN PHoto BART VAN OVERBEEKE

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

Going with the flow My study and career were never clearly-marked paths. I was good at chemistry but also at mathematics and physics. What finally decided it for me was the notion that everything can be reduced to chemistry. I didn’t experience many bumps in the road so I got my degree from TU/e within five years. Then it him me: ‘And now? I don’t want to go work at Shell. What am I going to do with myself?’

Reflection That question kept gnawing at me after working at various jobs.

After I lost my job due to a company reorganization, I decided to take a break and reflect on my choices. The first thing I did was become a volunteer at the animal protection service’s emergency room. I’ve always found animal welfare to be important, but with a busy job and a young family, there was little time for doing this sort of thing. Now I had the chance.

Galgo We got a reality check when a friend of ours died suddenly.

My husband and I realized: ‘Life is short, what do you really want to do with it?’ He wanted to set up his own business and I wanted a dog. He founded EigenEnergie.net, a solar panel company specializing in advice, sales and installation.

Meanwhile, I went looking for a quiet dog that would suit our family. After googling, I hit upon the Galgo. I immersed myself in learning more about the race and read about their sad plight - every year 50,000 of these greyhounds are discarded in Spain after the hunt. There’s a myth there among hunters that the more your current dog suffers, the better your next dog will be. That means the discarded dogs suffer a horrible death.

I decided that I wanted to adopt a Galgo. Our first dog was Lizzy, who was already in the Netherlands with a foster family. I didn’t keep it to just one dog; Odin from Seville soon followed. I then became involved with the Galgo Support Holland Foundation.

I organize activities, occasionally go on working visits to shelters in Spain and I take part in the fostering team. I help dogs on their way to their final owner. So far we’ve fostered four dogs. I try to stay realistic when I foster these animals: we take them into our family, but we don’t keep them. The good feeling that you get by being able to help more dogs outweighs the wish to want to adopt them permanently.

Awareness In retrospect, medicine or veterinary medicine might have been a better fit for me, but I don’t regret my choice of study; it’s brought me to where I am now. I hope we can teach our children to consciously choose their area of study and what they want in life.

For the coming years, I hope that our own company - which I’ve been working for for almost three years - continues to do well.

But I don’t look more than a few years down the road. It’s going really well. In addition to the private sector, we now also have some business customers. We’ve snagged some major clients such as Mars and AH XL and we now have seven people working for us. I definitely derive satisfaction from our business, but if I’m honest, I’m really happiest when I can help a dog find a ‘forever home.’

Venturer Franka van den Boomen-Thijssen Age 39 Positions • Financial administration / sales department / backoffice employee EigenEnergie.net • Volunteer at the Galgo Support Holland Foundation • Volunteer animal protection services • Enforcement officer, municipality of Best • Inspector of industrial labor conditions at Inspectorate SZW • Engineer at Xerox Study • 1994 - 1999 Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, TU/e

40 41

Apps, wearables and swallowables how can technology help us to live healthier lives?

TeXt Nicole Testerink PHotos Bart van Overbeeke ILLUSTRATIONS Anabella Meijer

nr.12 nr.1september november 2015 2011 / MAGAZINE VAN of the de

In the fight against lifestyle diseases like diabetes and obesity - and in terms of general health - there are more and more digital tools. Think of serious games, apps that help us to live more healthfully or wearables that record all kinds of bodily functions and values.

Prevention is a hot topic, with increasing numbers of people who want to take control of their own health. But is healthy living just another feel-good topic, allowing game developers to cash in on the hype with their digital tools? Or will these technological trends revolutionize health care?

42 43

s soon as he arrives, Peter Portheine puts a futuristic-looking device on the table. Several eyebrows shoot up. It turns out that the Scanadu Scout can measure several vital signs - heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and oxygen saturation - within seconds just by putting it against the user’s forehead. It’s a perfect example of the day’s topic of discussion: how do we prepare society for letting technology into their everyday lives? Portheine is one of six Mission participants who have gathered in the Student Sports Centre’s gym. And although moderator Lucas Asselbergs has laid out some volleyballs and basketballs in order to, literally, get his group into action, it seems the group is limiting itself to heated discussions on technology, lifestyle and health.

‘What is health?’ asks Hans Brands, throwing the question out to the group. ‘As a hospital, we’re increasingly becoming more of a knowledge center that’s not only concerned with doing what we’re good at - making people better - but rather we’re emerging as leaders of disease prevention. In line with that idea, we’re saying that health is more than just not being sick.’ ‘We also can’t forget chronic conditions’, says Portheine. ‘According to the WHO’s definition, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing. In light of that definition, a large part of the population wouldn’t be considered healthy, if only because more than half suffer from a chronic condition. In that case, it’s better to look at health as the ability to adapt and take control of life’s physical, emotional and social challenges.’ ‘And we need to deal with an aging society’, adds Loe Feijs. ‘People are living longer which means certain condi­ tions are appearing more often. Given that prevention is generally cheaper than medical intervention, I think we are increasingly moving in that direction.’ Brands: ‘Early diagnosis and home treatment are also included in that list. But it has to do with

changing people’s willingness to do these things and getting them to grow into this role. We have a responsibility to apply new technologies in the right way.’

‘New technology can also make people unhealthier’

When people talk about new technology in healthcare, Joost van Hoof says they focus too much on ICT. ‘It’s a shame because low-tech tools could still use a lot of improvement and they could have a big influence on the user. New technologies can also make people unhealthier. Consider automatic curtains.

It’s very convenient to close them with the push of a button, but it also means the user moves less and that could mean a possible loss of function. These sorts of innovations aren’t always the solution. By spending a few bucks on a modified door handle, you enable people to open doors themselves and you don’t need an expensive automatic door mechanism. Perhaps it’s not as sexy, but it

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

is effective.’ Anne Maas nods her agreement.

‘Simple solutions often work the best.’

Asselbergs soon shares a pile of brightlycolored sticky notes for a brainstorming session. The question isn’t ‘if’ but ‘how’ technology can make our lives healthier and what do we do to make that possible?

The participants think quietly for a while and start scribbling down notes. Asselbergs picks up a piece of paper that van Hoof has laughingly pushed aside. It contains a single word, double underlined: bicycle. Van Hoof explains: ‘People need to get moving in more areas of their daily lives so I immediately thought of biking. Low-tech.’ ‘But your low-tech solutions go hand-in-hand with high-tech ones, Feijs counters. ‘I almost always come to work on my bike thanks to websites such as Buienradar (an app that predicts rain showers, ed.). That’s a nice piece of technology

Hans Brands

that supports using my bike. But it does mean that I’ve built a healthy ritual into my daily life. And what about electric bikes?’

Another issue that comes up is the automation of diagnostics. Specialists are often endlessly working on making diagnoses when they could be doing something better with their time, says Chris Snijders. ‘There are many model-based ways to make diagnoses on a large scale. It’s simply a matter of implementing what we already know; we don’t have to create anything new. Moreover, it costs less and makes fewer mistakes.

It could make a tremendous difference.’

Maas can see the benefits. ‘Getting diabetes patients started on medication is often based on trial and error. While it’s clearly laid out in the literature: for a patient with such and such values, go through these steps. A computer could immediately prescribe that.’

Loe Feijs

Such an approach on a global scale could also be beneficial in terms of polypharmacy and the side effects that can occur when taking multiple medications’, says van Hoof.

Yet Snijders continues to insist on going a step further. ‘There are so many drugs and we can’t expect doctors to memorize all the possible interactions. Everybody understands that a computer would be better for that than a GP. But it’s also about making a diagnosis on the basis of values and that can largely be modeled.’ Portheine: ‘Think about Spotify and Airbnb; there are similar companies in the healthcare sector lurking in the background who could completely change the industry.

The opportunities for growth have exploded exponentially with the advent of the smartphone. It’s only a matter of time until home diagnostics are as reliable as in a hospital.

And prevention: check yourself twice a day and use an app for a bit of interpretation and

Peter Portheine

director Health Innovation Campus, Veldhoven.

Professor of Industrial Design of Embedded Systems in the Department of Industrial Design, TU/e.

Program manager Health Brainport Development and director SlimmerLeven (Living Smarter) 2020.

‘Implementing new technologies is based on want, can, should and, in the end, do’

‘Apps that record everything are increasing our data streams and our challenge is this: how do we make sense of this information?’

‘Creating awareness about healthcare is custom work, each target group requires its own specific approach’

44 45

prediction. These days, we regularly measure sick people and top athletes, but soon it’ll be for everyone.’ Van Hoof shudders: ‘Very nice - all those apps, wearables, and swallowables, but when my smartphone starts telling me how to live my life, I’ll immediately chuck it into the trash.’

Boss of your own data Do we really want to measure and know everything and is every measurement relevant? And once you know everything, does that information belong to you or someone else? The issue soon becomes a discussion on big data, security and privacy.

‘We’ll soon be gathering an enormous mountain of data and what’s going to happen with it? It’s okay if I know something about

myself and I’m the owner of that data. But if some stranger off the street also gets access to it, that’s not okay. There are plenty of unscrupulous people out there who don’t have the best intentions and would like to make money off of my data. Data mining is becoming increasingly more important’,

says Feijs. ‘However, the average person still doesn’t know what to do with it’, says Maas.

Smartwatches get used a few times and then disappear in a drawer. There’s something to be said for collecting this data - it’s sitting there anyway. Maybe you can’t do anything useful with it, but somebody else could.

Anne Maas

Chris Snijders

Head of the Expertise Center on Health Innovations and Technology, Fontys.

PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Physics and engaged in serious gaming for patients with type II diabetes.

Professor of the Sociology of Technology and Innovation in the Department of IE&IS, TU/e, and co-creator of the app OddSpot which detects precancerous skin cancer.

‘We need to get rid of the stigma surrounding healthcare; we need to offer people products and consumer goods instead of healthcare aids’

‘In order for new technology to catch on, we shouldn’t focus as much on groundbreaking technology but rather on building on what we already have’

‘Apps can ensure that healthy behavior is fun and entertainment always works better than punishment’

Joost van Hoof

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

Feijs, getting worked up: ‘Yes, make money off of me.’ Maas qualifies. ‘A major diabetes pump manufacturer now gathers - often unnoticed - all kinds of data. People click ‘accept’ when they get the device and asso­ ciated software without knowing exactly what that means. Often, they don’t have a choice because they want to use that pump anyway. The company uses their data to detect specific problems and improve the pump. Does this do the patient any harm?

No, in this case, they benefit.’ Brands particularly has trouble with the loss of control.

‘It has to do with the opening up of data and your autonomy. Should you do it or not?

But the data I release can present a mixed profile of me. It could be held up to me at any given moment: this is you. Then I can say but that’s not entirely me, but apparently it is true. We might like to think we’re autonomous, but in the meantime ...’

‘A pedometer with your Big Mac Menu? That shouldn’t happen!’

Using data responsibly is a hot topic, Asselbergs summarizes. If we look at it from a positive angle, then how can technology help us to live healthier lives? Feijs: ‘I think we really need look at the prevention side of things and ensure that an unhealthy lifestyle isn’t forced upon us so much. It’s a combi­ nation of sociology, law and technology.

The food industry plays a huge role in this process. The most cynical example is the pedometer that you get as a gift with a Big Mac Menu. That shouldn’t happen!’ ‘People seem to love the misery of others’, says Brands. ‘Take all those comparative apps: ‘I do it better than you do’, but also the reality

TV shows. Astonishing.’ Maas sees possibilities. ‘If we could convey a little bit of education through those programs, we’d reach a very large group.’ However, Snijders says studies have shown that this sort of educa­ tion is usually pointless. ‘Programs on healthy eating encourage precisely the opposite.

I think that’s the bigger challenge than technological skills: how do we ensure that living healthfully will catch on?’ Portheine: ‘Don’t keep all the options open or everyone will just hang onto the existing one. We shouldn’t create a hybrid world. If a new technology has been proven to be effective, then get rid of the old one.’

There are other important issues in intro­ ducing technology into healthcare, begins Brands. ‘How do we stay online without interruptions; how can we guarantee continuity and security? We already have a

shortage of nurses at the bedside, but also there won’t be enough technical hands.’

Van Hoof calls attention to the pig sector where they’re ten years ahead of the human situation. ‘Animals are monitored, get their food and drink and kept entertained. We could learn something from that sector about what they expect to happen with issues such as record keeping and automation.’

The question ‘how can technology help us to live healthier lives?’ suggests something big, says Snijders ‘and I think we need to think much smaller. Everything big started small. ‘He picks up a basketball and throws it effortlessly through the hoop. Asselbergs smiles, it’s been a success. They didn’t talk only about health the entire afternoon.

46

September

agenda/

October

23 15

Exposition of the World Press Photo on the TU/e campus Is it a still from a film or a news photo? This year the jury chose a picture from Danish photographer, Mads Nissen. It shows Jon and Alex, a gay couple in St. Petersburg, Russia. ‘The picture has a great aesthetic strength and it’s human’, said Michele McNally, director of photography for The New York Times and chairman of the World Press Photo.

This year, there were 97,912 photos submitted by 5,692 photographers from 131 different countries.

The exhibition displays more than 150 winning images. Most of the photos need no explanation, they’re a story in and of themselves.

The images are so powerful and full of meaning - it’s not possible for viewers to come away from the exhibition without being intimately acquainted with the previous year’s world events. It’s a confronting exhibition, prompting you to think about your own life and challenging you to keep looking.

Location: Vertigo, TU/e-campus Times: Monday - Friday: 9.00 - 18.00 Saturday and Sunday: 12.00 - 17.00 October

20 Alumni networking reception

during Dutch Design Week Like last year, TU/e alumni are invited for a networking reception at TU/e’s exhibition at the Dutch Design Week. This major, international design event will take place from October 17-25th. TU/e will be represented in the Klokgebouw at Strijp S with the exhibition ‘Mind the Step’. This exhibition will display the work of about sixty students and their research projects from various TU/e faculties and institutes and Design United (3TU). These are the sorts of projects that show when technology and design go hand-in-hand and that give us a glimpse into the future.

Curious? Then visit the special evening opening for alumni on Tuesday, October 20th and receive a DDW pass that’ll give you free access to the rest of the week’s DDW exhibitions and activities.

Location: Klokgebouw, Strijp S, Eindhoven Times: opens at 17.00 For information and to register: www.tue.nl/alumni

/gesteld

‘In light of the current Dutch laws, not charging a plug-in hybrid car should be seen as a form of tax evasion.’

Proposition from the thesis ‘Control of semi-active suspension and steer-by-wire for comfort and handling’ by Tom van der Sande.

‘Even though GPS is helping us to find our way more easily, the risk of getting lost is greater than ever.’

Proposition from the thesis ‘Republiek van beelden: de politieke werkingen van het ontwerp in regionale planvorming’ by Bart de Zwart.

‘Sharing important mistakes and failures - in addition to, of course, sharing successes - could be an immensely worthwhile contribution to science.

‘It can be quite Proposition form the thesis ‘ spectra land finite difficult to make Coupling elements for fluid-structure a mathematical interaction’ by Anna Catharina Verkaik. statement that is both appealing to mathemati­ cians (accurate) ‘Perfectionism and to a general is a virtue, but audience (short).’ also a handicap.’

Proposition from the thesis ‘Finiteness properties of varieties with large group actions’ by Rob Eggermont.

Proposition from the thesis ‘Evolution Equations for Systems Governed by Social Interactions’

by Joep Evers.

‘The rise of the Internet of Things is a big step forward - also for cybercriminals.’

Proposition from the thesis ‘Experimental Study of Homogeneous Water Nucleation in a Pulse-Expansion Wave Tube’ by Maurice Fransen.

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Cees Midden (1950), professor Human Technology-Interaction (Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences). He will hold his farewell speech on 30 October during the symposium ‘Persuasive Technology for a Sustainable Society’.

c.j.h.midden@tue.nl

TeXt Norbine Schalij PHoto Bart van Overbeeke

The intersection of psychology and technology Coffee ‘I studied psychology at Leiden University and also did my PhD there. My job as a behavioral scientist at ECN in Petten gave me some necessary experience with techies. However, when I came to TU/e’s Philosophy and Social Science Department as a professor in 1991, it took some getting used to. I thought TU/e was a good but conservative university. It was a highly technological place, but it was lacking on the social side of things. The former program, Technology and Society, wasn’t valued very much and I sometimes wondered what I’d gotten myself into. Fortunately, I managed to build a good group; in the late 90s, Human Technology Interaction started to distinguish itself, in part due to the new master’s program. With the introduction of the Bachelor College, the undergraduate degree Psychology and Technology has become a complete educational program for studying the intersection of humans and technology.’

Social influence

‘In recent years, I’ve enjoyed working on persuasive technology, especially in the fields of environment and safety. It’s about using smart systems to influence people’s behavior. We’ve developed interfaces for devices such as washing machines, thermostats, computers, lighting and cars that encourage users to make energyefficient choices. It’s worked amazingly well and we’re going further with this research.’

Japan

‘I’m an avid traveler. I’ve spent a lot of time in Asia, especially Japan, for research. Perhaps Japanese society isn’t ideal, but everything is perfectly organized and there’s little crime.

Scientists also interact differently with each other there. There is more of a collective perspective - the Japanese operate more as a group rather than glorifying individual successes the way we do in our culture.’

On page 2 forward/ with Josien Pluim

‘I’m a coffee lover and I even roast my own, carefully selected, beans. Indonesian beans have a chocolatey taste, Ethiopian tend to be more floral and Guatemalan beans are fruity and spicy.

I even have diplomas - one for being a barista and another for coffee roasting. I drink coffee from a Douwe Egberts machine in the IPO building and you’ll never hear me complain about it. But thanks to my espresso machine, I drink very special coffees at home.’

After 30 October

‘Life goes on. My work won’t stop after my farewell speech.

I’m still supervising MSc and PhD students and I’ll stay involved with research. I also do some consulting work for governments on topics such as waste, energy consumption and aircraft noise. And, of course, there’s still a book on persuasive technology that needs to be finished.’

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Lab-on-a-chip

nr.12 september 2015 / MAGAZINE of the

TeXt Tom Jeltes PHoto Bart van Overbeeke

In the future, we may no longer associate the word ‘lab’ with a room full of special devices, operated by people with protective goggles and white lab coats, but with a ‘device’ that fits on a credit card and can be read out with a smart phone in the middle of the African jungle. TU/e hopes to strengthen its role in the search for such ‘labs-on-chips’ with their renovated Microfab lab.

1979 Researchers at Stanford University develop the first lab-on-a-chip in the form of a miniaturized gas chromatograph.

The device contains a 1 1/2 meter long spiral column, transferred onto a five-centimeter round silicon wafer by using lithographic techniques from the computer industry.

Ca. 1990 Several European research groups develop micro-pumps and flow sensors that will later serve as a basis for complete microfluidic laboratories a place where liquids can be analyzed in channels of less than a millimeter.

1998 Scientists at Harvard University show that you can use the transparent and gas-permeable polymer PDMS to create a lab-on-a-chip, without a cleanroom and without expensive equipment.

2009 Researchers from Organic Functional Materials and Devices (Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, TU/e) develop tiny flaps based on plastic liquid crystals that move under the influence of light. This invention can be used in labs-on-a-chip in order to transport and mix liquids.

2010s In order to facilitate the large-scale production of labs-on-a-chip by means of injection molding, major players such as Sony and Philips use thermoplastics. These companies have experience in injection molding for the production of CDs and DVDs.

2013 Inspired by nature, researchers in the Microsystems Group (Mechanical Engineering Department, TU/e) develop artificial cilia. These cilia can be moved with a magnetic field and can be integrated into microfluidic chips; these cilia aid in the movement and mixing of liquids in the chip.

2015 TU/e opens its renovated Microfab lab.

Researchers have cleanroom facilities, lithography equipment, laser cutters and 3D printers at their disposal for the rapid prototyping of labs-on-a-chip. There’s also a laboratory for biological experiments.

2015 TU/e becomes a co-founder of the new Dutch institute hDMT - an organization trying to develop drugs using microtechnology, including growing mini-organs on chips.

2014 Researcher Maarten Merkx (Department of Biomedical Engineering, TU/e) receives a European Proof of Concept grant to develop a sensor protein that can reveal infectious diseases by staining a piece of paper.

This extremely simple variant of the lab-on-a-chip can be read out with a smartphone and needs to be cheap enough that it’s also suitable for use in developing countries.