Videos

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. 

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!

Potatoes are highly susceptible to diseases and pests. To better protect these crops, computer scientist Jana Wieme is deploying drones and artificial intelligence. With that extra eye, potato farmers can monitor each individual plant and thus intervene quickly when needed. In this video, she explains how it works.

When removing a kidney tumor, a surgeon has just 20 minutes to do the job. During the operation, the surgeon has to cut off the blood supply to the kidney to avoid a true blood bath. But if the kidney is without blood for too long, too much of it will die off, causing the kidney to malfunction. Using mathematical models, Saar Vermijs aims to help surgeons in their race against the clock...

Today, we can treat cancer better than ever. Yet some cancer types remain very difficult to fight. Such is the case of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive brain cancer in which only 7 in 100 patients are still alive five years after diagnosis. Hoping to help glioblastoma get small, Joke Deschildre doctored a sophisticated strategy to attack cancer cells.

Can you think of what products you would like to buy in 10 years' time? Predicting the future is quite difficult, isn't it? And yet that is what we expect from people who invent and develop new products. Lore Brosens wants to help product designers, both students and existing design engineers. How? By training them to think critically and come up with creative solutions.

Everywhere in Flanders you can find beautiful historical buildings, such as belfries and castles. They have been there for hundreds of years, but keeping all this historical heritage healthy is no easy task. Think of moisture problems and mold growth. And what about climate change? Is our heritage protected against it? Bruno Vanderschelden finds out.