Green Team Twente has presented its new hydrogen-powered car to the public. This year, the student team is focusing for the first time on building the only Formula Student car powered by hydrogen. The team hopes that this will make people enthusiastic about the possibilities of hydrogen and show that sustainable technologies are anything but boring.

The Netherlands must change its approach to promoting digitisation in the Dutch healthcare sector, according to a study conducted by UT (Sustainable Healthcare Technology, TechMed Centre, and the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences) and commissioned by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The study makes it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to implementing technology in healthcare. “Digitisation is about more than just the use of technology – above all, it’s about a different way of working, and that requires vision, guts and leadership”, says UT professor Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen.

The University of Twente is launching a new series of podcasts. In the series ‘My Future Dream Job’ host Anic van Damme steps into her time machine to the year 2030. There, she discovers which professions are important and will have an impact.

The University of Twente wants to reduce the CO2 emissions caused by air travel. That is why the UT introduces the Train Zone Map: a map of destinations which makes it easy to compare travel by train and plane. Not only the CO2 emissions, but also the total travel time and the number of transfers can be compared. With the tool, the UT wants to encourage its staff and students to choose the train over the plane whenever possible. ’For short distances, the train is the norm’.

The Executive Board of the University of Twente has appointed Professor Maroeska Rovers as scientific director of the Technical Medical Centre (TechMed Centre) as of 1 September 2022. She succeeds Professor Nico Verdonschot, who will focus on the national initiative MedTechNL. Her appointment is valid until 1 September 2026.

Exo Membra (Ideation), SonoMag (Prototyping) and Smart Road Marking Inspection (Start-up) are the category winners of the sixth edition of the UT Entrepreneurial Challenge. Resulting in several standing ovations from more than 350 attendees, smiling faces and cheering students during the exciting final on 16 June 2022.

Chips that look for traces of early-stage cancer in urine, or that mimic the blood-brain barrier. The fluidic systems that Loes Segerink is developing, can make the difference in health care. “In this type of research, you sometimes have to acknowledge the fact there’s a lot you do not know. Just visiting another lab, with your questions, maybe the onset of the best possible collaboration.” As a scientist, she also highly values outreach: she likes to tell about her work, to primary school pupils, at festivals and in the media. Prof. dr. Loes Segerink gives her inaugural address, as a Professor of Biomedical Microdevices at the University of Twente (TechMed Centre), June 17 2022.

During the Grand Finale of the UT Entrepreneurial Challenge, entrepreneur and UT alumnus Jeroen Wissink received the Van den Kroonenberg Award. This award, which spotlights entrepreneurs with ties to UT who have launched a successful start-up, is awarded annually by the Twente University Fund.

Last month, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Denmark announced their intention to increase the number of wind turbines in the North Sea by a factor of ten. The team led by Dr Richard Stevens, a Featured Scientist at the University of Twente, is studying the complexities of wind flow that can occur among so many turbines. Using newly developed computer models, they calculate the optimal layout for new wind farms such as those planned in the North Sea.

Logic gates, the basic elements of our digital world, can now be built using one single molecule. An example is ‘XOR’, with two inputs. Is at least one of them ‘1’, than the output is ‘1’ as well, otherwise it is 0. These logic gates have a size less than two nanometer. They are based on ‘single electron transistors’, capable of assemblying and organising themselves on a surface. Molecular logic not only reduce the on-chip dimensions and lower energy consumption: it might well be that these circuits have similarities with the way our brain processes signals, says Prof Christian Nijhuis, who published his results in Advanced Materials.

Five student teams, who are working on the sustainable mobility issue, invited the Minister of Energy and Climate, Rob Jetten, to come and take a look at their Future Factory. This is the business complex in Enschede where the teams’ innovative projects come to life. By making a connection between the politics and technology of the future, the student teams hope to give the transition to sustainability a valuable impulse with this visit.

With granting a total of 20 million euros to four capacity building programs within the theme of ‘High Tech for a Sustainable Future’ (HTSF), the 4TU.Federation gives a solid boost to research into technologies that contribute to a sustainable future and education within these themes. In the honored HTSF programs, scientists from the four technical universities are working on personalized healthcare (RECENTRE), reducing heat in cities (HERITAGE), developing green, biodegradable sensors (Green sensors) and a future-proof food system (High-tech & data-driven agri-food systems of the future).

The European Commission has awarded Dutch medical device startup Hy2Care €6 million in blended financing. Hy2Care® is a ‘spin-off company’ of the TechMed Centre of the University of Twente. This enables Hy2Care to complete its clinical studies and to obtain European market approval with its game-changing hydrogel for optimal cartilage repair.

RoboTeam Twente, a student team from the University of Twente and Saxion University of Applied Sciences, revealed a new generation of soccer robots on June 7th. The team has been working on improving and innovating the soccer robots since September. “I am proud of what we have achieved as a team this year, we have built a stable foundation for future teams,” says team manager Anne van Harten. In a month’s time, the team will travel to Bangkok (Thailand) with the robots to participate in the World Championships of robot football.

Ancora Health, a Dutch start-up specialising in preventive health and lifestyle therapy, is to work closely with the TechMed Centre of the University of Twente (UT) to enable personalised e-health. Combining Ancora’s technology platform with UT’s scientific knowledge and expertise will result in a unique partnership. The aim is to provide lifestyle support to people with lifestyle-related health risks and so help them to manage chronic diseases or prevent these from occurring. Encouraging effective interventions at an earlier stage of disease can reduce the pressure on the healthcare system.

The partnership between Ancora and UT’s TechMed Centre is expected to significantly increase the impact of new e-health technologies on the care of people with chronic diseases by providing personalised healthcare solutions and implementing them on a larger scale. The two parties hope to give a boost to Dutch healthcare by developing solutions for holistic modelling as a tool for diagnosis, remote patient monitoring, and digital coaching in the treatment of diabetes and osteoarthritis using artificial intelligence.