"I could be a real pioneer" ; interview with Marietta Spiekerman

From the first coachload of Indonesian students to the 1,500 international students who joined Master’s degree programmes at Delft in the past year. Marietta Spiekerman explains how, in the space of three decades, TU Delft evolved from a university with a predominantly national role into a world-renowned international university of technology

The storytellers of the Northern Light

They designed the Rijksmuseum app, which this year won several awards, and will release what they believe is the new standard for museum apps in October. TU alumni Steven Schaeken and Peter Slavenburg talk about their passion for design and technology

The social engineer

A philanthropist with a double life. Jacques van Marken, founder of the Dutch Yeast and Methylated Spirits Factory and the Agnetapark in Delft, felt at one with his workers, and was the first businessman in the Netherlands to organise housing and pensions. TU Delft alumnus Jan van der Mast is working on his biography

The floating city as an ecosystem

Floating construction: several municipalities in the Netherlands are working with it on a small scale. TU Delft alumnus Rutger de Graaf of the YesDelft company DeltaSync would like to speed things up with his Blue Revolution.

Prosthetic pride

An artificial leg, a hearing aid, a dust mask: there is a fair degree of stigma attached to some products. How do you deal with that as a designer? Kristof Vaes completed his doctorate on this subject in a joint study by the University of Antwerp and TU Delft.

Making MOOCS

The first two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were completed late last year, and the sequel is undergoing intensive preparation. The pioneers look back. “To meet the deadlines, we even made recordings at midnight

Devilish dilemmas

To receive funding for research, universities must collaborate more with private companies. How will this affect confidence in science? Are research results still actually reliable if the research is financed by companies?

Humour is my saviour

Doeschka Meijsing is this year’s guest writer at TU Delft. “It’s like the lion’s den to me.”