Videos

Corrosion of metal structures can lead to disasters, such as the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genua in 2018. In order to help prevent such tragedies engineer Negin Madelat is working on a method for the early detection of corrosion underneath a thick layer of coating.

Imagine you buy something online and the next day a delivery drone delivers your package at your front door. Robotics engineer Bryan Convens is developing computer algorithms to make this happen. He wants to ensure that swarms of drones can fly autonomously ánd safely through the sky.

The current corona crisis is having a huge impact on our lives. Artificial intelligence can help keep such a pandemic better under control, with less drastic measures and thus a more limited impact on our social lives. Pieter Libin explains how this works in this video.

An aortic aneurysm is a bulging of the large body artery. If such an aneurysm bursts, the patient can die. You'd think you'd better have surgery for this immediately, but such an operation is complex and risky. That is why engineer Klaas Vander Linden (KU Leuven)is trying to predict whether an aneurysm will burst.

What do bone marrow, liver and a tumor have in common? They all consist of so-called "soft tissue", which is not easily visualized by a CT scan. In order to study it, therefore, one has to extract pieces from a patient's body. Sarah Vangrunderbeeck wants to help change this.

To make the production of plastics and other chemical processes less energy-intensive and waste-producing, Max Bols turns to nature. Enzymes, the catalysts of living cells, hold the key to improve chemical processes, as he explains in this video. 

A dog's nose is one of the most powerful sensors we have. Trained dogs are even able to detect early signs of certain diseases by sniffing our breath. As this would not be very practical, Alex Cruz is looking to integrate a doglike 'nose' in our smartphones to do the trick.

Imagine a city where street lighting only functions when there are cars nearby and where waste bins alarm garbage trucks when they're full and need to be emptied... This might soon become reality, but only if we manage to process the huge amount of data that these smart devices will produce. That's what José Santos is trying to accomplish in order to turn our cities into smart cities.

Last year, scientists discovered bacteria in the mud of the North Sea that can conduct electricity. Robin Bonné (Hasselt University - FWO) is investigating whether we can use these 'cable bacteria' to create biodegradable electronic wires.

Last year, we all witnessed the horrible fire in the Notre Dame de Paris. While the magnificent stained-glass windows survived the inferno, they suffered damage and need to be repaired. But how can you repair such historic artefacts, of over 900 years old? That's where the 'science of light' comes in, as Mathilde Patin explains in this video.    

Did you know that your smartphone contains, among many other precious metals, about 20 milligrams of gold? That may not seem like much, but it's 200 times as much gold as in a small piece of gold ore. Nick Gys (UAntwerpen - VITO) is working on a technique to easily recycle these precious metals from smartphones.

Is the battery of your smartphone draining quickly? Charlotte Vets wants to ensure that our smartphone battery lasts longer. How? By focusing on new, tiny components that are up to 1,000 times smaller than a hair: carbon nanotubes.