Engineering

Prof. David Lentink is a partner in the NaviSense project awarded 54.7 million euros by the German government to research the mechanisms animals use to navigate and how these mechanisms can inspire technology.

Dr. Vassilis Kyriakou has received a EUR 400,000 grant of the NWO to develop an innovative electrochemical reactor for sustainable ammonia production.

Dynamical systems, i.e. mathematical models that describe how things evolve over time, are at the heart of much of the modern world. The real challenge, however, lies in shaping the systems’ behaviour to achieve a specific goal.

Nathalie Katsonis has won the Ammodo Science Award for Fundamental Research. She develops adaptive molecular materials and studies the chemical origins of life, which in turn yield insights for vaccines and clearing up oil spills at sea.

Two student teams from the University of Groningen and Hanze University of Applied Sciences will test two self-built mini-satellites in the municipality of Oldambt on April 24.

Paolo Pescarmona designs and builds catalysts, for example to turn carbon dioxide into polymers.

Professor Ming Cao receives an ‘AiNed’ Growth Fund grant of EUR 2.4 million for research that will contribute to faster adoption of AI at SMEs in the technical industry in the Netherlands.

Grid congestion poses a challenge to our electricity network, and expanding the infrastructure will take time and money. ‘What we can do right now, is manage and optimize what we have as best as we can,’ says Michele Cucuzzella. For example by using peaks in electricity generation to heat and store water which can then be used to heat houses in the city at a later stage.

Charissa Roossien developed a method to measure the amount of carbon dioxide a person exhales.

What if your research requires a huge international facility, which is far away and has limited availability? Moniek Tromp has built a tabletop version that allows her to take a large part of the measurements on new batteries in her own lab.

‘In nature, most flying animals rely on flapping movements,’ explains Mauricio Muñoz Arias, assistant professor of Automation and Control Systems. Together with his students, Muñoz Arias developed a featherlight device that flaps its wings like an insect: an ornithopter.

The black dots and lines on this plastic plate conduct electricity, and are as flexible as the plastic it is on. And that is special, Ranjita Bose, associate professor of Polymer Engineering, explains: ‘It’s a conductive polymer that combines the flexibility of plastics with the conductivity of metals.’ Bose can apply this coating in any pattern, and even on delicate materials such as textile fibres or human skin.

It’s stretchable, adhesive, self-healing in case it breaks, water and freezetolerant, and it conducts electricity. PhD student Zeyu Zhang developed a so-called hydrogel under supervision of Patrizio Raffa, associate professor of Smart and Sustainable Polymeric Products. Because the conductivity changes when the material is stretched, it can be used as a sensor: stick it to your elbow and you can measure how far it bends, or stick it to a building in a seismic zone and you can measure vibrations. Even in the rain.

A small company in Grootegast produces bicycle baskets and slippers from recycled rubber. That is remarkable because, until recently, it was impossible to recycle rubber. However, Francesco Picchioni, Professor of Chemical Technology at the University of Groningen, and Ton Broekhuis, now Emeritus Professor, discovered how this could be done.

Professor Bart Besselink is a partner in a consortium receiving 2 million euros from the National Growth Fund program 'NXTGEN Highteck'to develop a new design method for mechatronic systems.

Over the coming two years, the Northern Netherlands will receive almost €6 million from the government to accelerate the training of technical talent for the semiconductor industry.

Two UG researches, both working at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant: Jingxiu Xie and Gosia Wlodarczyk-Biegun. The European Research Council's (ERC) Starting Grants consist of €1.5 million each, for a period of five years. The grants are meant for outstanding researchers with the aim of stimulating cutting-edge research in Europe.