Why choose this Track?
- Freedom to choose your topic, define your project
- Learn to work in a multidisciplinary team
- Learn to present and defend your project
- Work with external partners, build a network
- Learn to relate your project to developments within the energy sector
- We encourage students, in Teams, to start a new project on the energy innovation of their preference. Several project opportunities are also offered by the Strategic Area Energy (SAE), organizing this Track. Additionally, students can join existing Honors Teams of our Track. Coaches will assist you in defining your project, but you, as a Team are responsible for setting and reaching objectives, making a planning, managing budget, organizing your team etc.
- Within the Energy Transition Track you will work in multidisciplinary teams consisting of at least three students having at least two different backgrounds. As energy production, consumption, transport and storage offer a broad line of (technological) challenges that need to be solved and incorporated in our society, all innovations should be analyzed from different perspectives. Organizing our students in multidisciplinary teams is therefore a necessity.
- Within our Track meetings and during events of the Strategic Area Energy, we offer the possibility to present your project and in this way obtain feedback, improve your presentation skills and reach out to peers and (possibly, external) partners.
- During the process of project definition, your Team will be coached and you will be directed to opportunities for reaching out to partners.
- You need to obtain sufficient knowledge about that part of the sector in which the energy technology which you’ll be working on will take a place, ensuring that you can discuss the competition in the market and its place in society.
The world population is growing and wealth in certain countries is increasing. As conventional energy resources are becoming scarce and energy demand is growing, the need to switch to more efficient use of resources and more radical changes to use sustainable energy resources is becoming more and more urgent. Additionally, greenhouse gas emissions need to decrease substantially over the next 35 years.
This university emphasizes its part in this transition through the Strategic Area Energy (SAE), which has been one of the three focus areas for several years now.
At the SAE we explore a broad spectrum of promising technologies. In the short term, researchers expect to generate novel technologies for more sustainable use of existing resources. Research focuses on the built environment, new fuel technologies and smart grid solutions. For the near future, research will deliver novel solar cells and other new revolutionary energy conversion and storage technologies. In the longer run, our nuclear fusion research will contribute to a sustainable transition in a global team effort.
Examples of research questions of previous Energy Transition Track Projects:
- Can heat pump systems become important contributors to fulfilling the heat demand in the Netherlands?
- How can the production process of wood vinegar, a replacement for use of chemical pesticides in rural Thailand, be optimized?
- Can we run a bus on formic acid?
- Can the heat released when burning metals, make an important contribution to either electricity demand or energy demand in transport (mobility)?
- How can we design a smart grid for the TU/e campus?