Videos

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.

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.

"If we would cover the entire surface of Portugal with solar panels , this would generate enough energy to power the entire world. But of course, no Portuguese would ever allow this. But what about using their windows?" Jacopo Sala talks about new generation of solar panels.

"In the early days, a computer was the size of a storage room. But today, this computer wouldn't stand a chance against the smartphone in your pocket" How is this even possible? Well, thanks to the nanotechnology inside your smartphone. In his PhD Balakumar Baskaran zooms in on the nanoscale

New smartphones and laptops with increased memory capacity are released all the time. We've become used to have more storage available at a lower price continuously. Anastassiia Kruv (imec) explains how scientist and engineers are constantly challenged to assure this trend.

Computer scientist Ingmar Dasseville (KU Leuven) tries to ensure that our tax money is spent more efficiently. How? By developing computer languages that our government can use, for example, to develop more efficient and thus cheaper tax software.

Marjolein Deryck (KU Leuven) build bridges between academia and industry. How? By translating the knowledge of experts into customized computer systems, so that companies, but also governments, can make decisions more efficiently.

Jan-Pieter D'Anvers keeps secrets. Your secrets. Think of your bank card code or your e-mails. He develops encryption algorithms to secure electronic communication and transactions.