Videos

Sujith Reddy is working on perovskites, a promising new solar cell technology that captures more sunlight and costs less than conventional solar cells. Sounds great, right! But there's a catch: these perovskite solar cells ironically tend to break down when exposed to ... light. Sujith wants to uncover the mechanisms behind this degradation in order to improve perovskites and to use them on a larger scale.

Have you ever heard of the mysterious "crazy root disease"? Sounds like something you'd rather not have in your garden or greenhouse, right? 🌱 Find out more about this bizarre plant disease and how the VIB and the KU Leuven are determined to get rid of it! 💡✨

What if we could predict whether a person with dementia is about to become agitated? That would help caregivers intervene in time and direct their attention to this person, so as to prevent agitation onset. That's what Hannah Davidoff (KU Leuven - Imec) hopes to achieve. Using wearables and other sensors, she builds algorithms to detect agitation.

Do you own an electric car? Then you know how difficult it can be to find available charging spots. But what if we cover electric cars with solar panels so that they can charge themselves with the power of the sun? Well, that's not easy because conventional solar panels used on roofs can't be integrated into our cars. Electrical engineer Bin Luo is looking at new solar panels suitable for our cars.

Did you know that AI can help doctors detect breast cancer? Or that it can be used to predict sepsis, a life-threatening condition, in premature babies? AI seems to be a great advancement in many ways, yet many people fear or don't trust the technology. Ignace Decroix wants to identify what exactly causes people to have more or less trust in AI.

Producing renewable, low-cost energy in a robust way remains a challenge. Jose Maria Cuevas (Imec - KU Leuven - Energyville) is looking at a new sort of solar cell that might help do the trick: the *take a breath* 3 Terminal Tandem Bifacial Solar Cell 😅 Say what ⁉️ Jose breaks it down and makes it crystal clear for you in this video. 👏

Why is it that some plants like moss stay very small, while others grow to become large trees? 🌳 "There's still a lot that we don't know about how plants grow exactly", says Max Minne (VIB - UGent). To find out more Max uses an innovative technique that allows him to look at every single cell in the plant and unravel how the hormone cytokinin, responsible for plant growth, impacts each one of them. 

Up to 25% of the cells present in lung cancer tumours are currently ignored. As such, we don't know what the role of these so-called B cells is. "It is crucial to figure that out because we cannot efficiently fight something we do not fully understand," says Pauline Bardet (VUB - VIB - FWO).

In her PhD, she wants to get to the bottom of those B cells and thus find out whether those cells are "good guys" or "bad guys".

Roughly every 5 minutes someone on this planet dies of ALS, and the sad truth is that we still do not have an effective treatment to cure this disease. The problem lies in the fact that we do not fully understand what causes ALS in the first place. In his doctorate, Jimmy Beckers is trying to solve a piece of the puzzle. He is investigating whether a malfunction in our internal cellular recycling system might be linked to ALS.

The year is 2040. A drone just landed on your doorstep, delivering your favorite pizza, which you just ordered a few minutes ago. 🍕 😋 What a time to be alive right?! To make this scenario a reality, Adnan Albaba (Imec - VUB) is working on radar technology to make self-navigating drones.

What impact does man, through sand extraction for example, have on life on the bottom of the North Sea? To find out, experts manually check which (often very small) animals they can find in samples of the seafloor. But this way, it can take up to 10 hours to analyse one sample. In her research, Laure Van den Bulcke is working on a faster and cheaper method.

How do you make a dairy cow emit less nitrogen without her producing less milk? To this end, Tine Van Den Bossche (ILVO - UGent) is doing tests with different feed additives that help the cow make milk proteins, among other things. Her goal: to provide milk that is not only good for all of us, but also better for the environment!