New Erasmus+ project IDEM launched

Unite! wants to create a new model of a European virtual and physical campus accessible to all Unite! students. The new Erasmus+ project “IDEM – Inclusion, Diversity, Equity in Mobility”, which was officially launched in a virtual kick-off meeting on February 14, aims to enable in particular students with disabilities, refugee students and first-generation students to fully participate in all mobility programmes between Unite! partner universities. Concrete approaches will be developed for this over the next three years. The project is coordinated by the TU Darmstadt.

Thanks to “Athene Young Investigator” Tobias Meuser, mobile networks are becoming more resilient

How can the future 5G communication network be made more resilient? Dr Tobias Meuser is researching the resilience of the 5G network. Dr Meuser has a doctorate in electrical engineering and works as a project manager in the Collaborative Research Centre MAKI – Multi-Mechanisms Adaptation for the Future Internet.

Unite! wants to pave the way for the excellence in research, innovation and education that is essential to meet the challenges of our time. Our Mission Statement 2030 is the result of a concerted effort by the entire Unite! community.

Unite! University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering aims to reach the next level of development as a European university alliance, creating a wealth of new and unprecedented opportunities for its students, staff and partners in the coming years. Continuing its journey that began in 2019, Unite! aims to develop as a dynamic and inclusive university alliance, committed to long-term sustained collaboration and progressive integration.

The Manifesto presents the students’ ideas on the future of Higher Education in Europe, as well as some recommendations to make European universities more in line with their expectations.

In the perspective of the Conference on the Future of Europe which took place this past January, students from Bachelor’s to PhD from all European universities were invited to design a manifesto. This Conference was designed to be an incubator for new proposals for shaping the university of tomorrow, involving national authorities, the European Commission and drawing in particular on the feedback from the 41 alliances set up under the “European Universities” initiative.

It includes objectives, recommendations and actions that the universities of the alliance can promote to make Unite! a European driver of open science and innovation by 2023.

Unite! has presented the alliance's strategic roadmap for moving towards open science. The proposal includes a set of objectives and recommendations that universities and schools should promote, develop and transform into actions, redesigns and incentives, to advance the adoption of open science practices, principles and objectives in all the partner universities of the alliance.

Publication in “Nature Communications”: Laser serves as compact particle accelerator

A team led by the Technical University of Darmstadt has for the first time made laser-generated neutrons usable for an industrial application. The researchers showed that neutrons generated compactly with lasers can be used in non-destructive material testing.

“Visual robot programming” project receives funding of more than one million euros

For its new Transition Grant program, the European Innovation Council (EIC) has for the first time selected 42 projects from 292 proposals to receive a total of €99 million in EU funding. The very first Transition Grant goes with the highest possible score to computer science professor Jan Peters and his team at the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group. For their pioneering project “Visual Robot Programming”, the team will receive funding of over 1 million euros over two years.

EU funds research on human behaviour with 2 million euros

Constantin Rothkopf, Director of the Center for Cognitive Science at TU Darmstadt, will receive a highly prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). His project “ACTOR – Towards a computational account of natural sequential behavior” will be funded with almost two million euros over a period of five years. This award further strengthens the numerous activities of TU Darmstadt in the area of cognitive science and artificial intelligence (AI).

Start-up Energy Robotics solves sensitive monitoring tasks worldwide

In March 2019, former doctoral students at the Technical University of Darmstadt Alberto Romay, Stefan Kohlbrecher, Dorian Scholz and TU alumnus Marc Dassler founded the company “Energy Robotics GmbH” together with Professor Oskar von Stryk. Today, just three years later, the team with its software for autonomous inspection robots is a global leader in the market for monitoring oil, gas or chemical plants. Energy Robotics' software is already being successfully used on a continuous basis in 13 countries on four continents and the TU spin-off is continuing to expand.

New opportunities for the future of Unite!

The new Erasmus+ call in the context of the European Universities Initiative, the consolidation of the alliance’s structure with the future addition of two new members and the advancement of many of the projects, will be the focus of the alliance's work this year 2022.

TU Darmstadt offers career weeks around the postdoc phase

In April, early career researchers of the Rhine-Main Universities are invited to join a variety of career and information events to push their postdoc career and network with experienced researchers.

International research team led by TU Darmstadt studies complex ecosystems

Can destroyed rainforests regenerate? This is the research focus of the “Reassembly” consortium funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and led by the Technical University of Darmstadt. Using ants as a case study, it is possible to assess whether and how well a rainforest can be restored after agricultural use. The results have now been presented in the international journal “Ecological Applications”.

Teams from TU Darmstadt and TU Graz explore motion in viscoelastic fluids

Why do large gas bubbles in viscoelastic liquids (such as polymer and protein solutions) rise so much faster than expected? An open question with great relevance for industrial production processes. Researchers at TU Darmstadt and TU Graz have now found an explanation and published it in the “Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics”.

New support programme for doctoral candidates

The new Ingenium programme PEERStart supports doctoral candidates in shaping their doctoral phase through networking and collegial advice. Kick-off is in March. All doctoral candidates at TU Darmstadt can participate.

Strategic research cooperation between the etit Department and Stellantis

The Laboratory of Adaptive Lighting Systems and Visual Processing at the Technical University of Darmstadt was recently accepted as an “OpenLab” in a worldwide research network of the automotive manufacturer Stellantis. The aim of the cooperation: to develop a new generation of intelligent automotive lighting technology and bring it to the road.