News

Media: Innovation accelerator Eindhoven Engine enters new phase

As a society, we face numerous challenges. At Eindhoven Engine, a collaborative program between companies, knowledge institutions, social organizations and citizens in the Brainport region, work has been going on for years on innovations to address these problems. Now the program is breaking new ground.

Media: Eindhoven Engine start vier innovatieprojecten in energie en gezondheid

mechatronicamachinebouw.nl

brainporteindhoven.com

For most of us, the summer holidays are in sight and it looks like the summer is going to be as normal as we could have wished for over the last year.

“There are more exciting things coming up after summer; we will keep you posted!”

Joris Dufils – Eindhoven Engine Community

For me personally, it’s also a moment to reflect a bit on what we’ve achieved since the beginning of the year and what we need to pick up after the summer. It’s incredible satisfying to see that we kept on and keep on growing our community of practice, enabling you to connect with peers and people from different backgrounds, domains and businesses in order to accelerate innovation. Some interesting topics emerged in the webinars and we held a successful workshop series around the future of work. The co-location will receive amazing, active art designed and developed by young artists Tjeu van Bussel and Serge Gruson, which will be finished before the summer. We are also preparing the onboarding of new Eindhoven Engine projects and I would like to reach out to you to give them a warm welcome during the next webinar in July. There are more exciting things coming up after summer; we will keep you posted!

Serge Gruson working on the active art.

kadans.com

Eindhoven Engine, the accelerator for innovation projects, welcomes four projects with a focus on energy and health technology: Brain for Buildings, NEON EE, GEM-stage and VIPNOM. The four projects will carry out research worth a total budget of over 11 million euros, with Eindhoven Engine contributing 1.4 million euros. The investment for the Eindhoven Engine OpenCall 2021 comes from the Brainport Region Deal.

The projects can continue to develop under the wings of Eindhoven Engine and get their innovations to market faster. In addition, they will work together at the Eindhoven Engine co-location on the TU/e Campus to help build the internal community.

Brain for Buildings – Automating Performance Assurance Climate Installations

The first OpenCall 2021 project is called Brain for Buildings. The goal is to develop a self-learning module that can monitor and diagnose climate systems in large buildings. This will enable a climate system to perform better; for instance, lower energy consumption, better thermal comfort and better air quality. More efficient maintenance is also possible. The module will be used as an add-on for the Building Energy Management System (BEMS) of offices. The partners in this project are AirTeq, ArtEnergy,  Avans, BAM, Building G100, CEO, ChessWise, DWA, DYSECO, Kropman, Peutz, Renor, Royal HaskoningDHV, Sensing 360, Strukton, TNO, TU Eindhoven and WOI.

NEON EE – New Energy Outlook for the Netherlands Eindhoven Engine

The second project is NEON EE, part of the NEON research program that focuses on the societal challenges of climate change, clean energy and smart mobility. The models, or digital twins, being developed provide information on ways to reduce CO2. With the information acquired, research is being conducted into a low-carbon future through realistic and cost-effective ways. NEON EE will enable these models to be brought to market even faster. Within Eindhoven Engine, several parties will test the tooling, nourishing it with more and more data and therefore enabling it to present an even more realistic picture. Partners in this project are Fontys, Lightyear, TU Eindhoven and Zenmo.

GEM stage – Demonstration of Green Energy Mill stage

Large events, such as festivals, consume more electricity than the main grid can supply. As a result, festivals rely on generators that consume up to 130,000 liters of diesel per event. With more than 12,000 large outdoor events in Western Europe each year, it is essential to find ways to reduce this waste and pollution. The GEM tower has been developed to change this. This tall tower is a large battery that controls the storage and distribution of renewable wind and solar energy. In this project, GEM-stage wants to complete the supply of renewable sources in the GEM-stage by adding hydrogen. The partners are DENS, Double2, Flexotels, TU Eindhoven, and ZAPConcepts.

VIPNOM – VIrtual Position NOise Measurement

VIPNOM focuses on the further development of methods to measure noise. Noise is the second largest harmful environmental factor in Europe and claims a million healthy years of life each year due to stress and sleep disturbances. To effectively combat unwanted noise, it is important to be able to measure it. Today, noise is measured by placing microphones at relevant locations. With microphone arrays at central locations, noise levels at several desired locations can also be measured simultaneously. To date, similar measurement methods have been developed. In order to accurately measure noise levels, VIPNOM will further develop, optimize and implement these methods. The resulting algorithms will be tested in the living labs Stratumseind and Strijp-S. GNResound, Sorama and TU Eindhoven are the partners in this collaboration.

Common goal: accelerate innovation

For OpenCall 2021, which calls for projects to come up with innovative proposals that address societal challenges, Eindhoven Engine selected four projects following an evaluation based on predefined criteria by a team of independent experts.

Bert Pauli, chairman of the supervisory board of Eindhoven Engine, is pleased: “Our criteria focus on how innovations can be brought to market faster and more successfully. Only high-quality project proposals are honored. You notice that partners and consortia increasingly find their way to Eindhoven Engine and come up with excellent proposals in order to benefit to the fullest extent from our co-location and potential cross-sector collaborations.”

Maarten Steinbuch and Katja Pahnke. Photographed before Corona. Photo: Bart van Overbeeke

“The projects at Eindhoven Engine have a common goal: to accelerate innovation in the Brainport region.”

–  Maarten Steinbuch

Katja Pahnke and Maarten Steinbuch, directors of Eindhoven Engine, agree wholeheartedly. Steinbuch: “The projects at Eindhoven Engine have a common goal: to accelerate innovation in the Brainport region. They achieve this with research into high-quality technological solutions, facilitated by Eindhoven Engine. And these solutions answer the societal challenges facing our generation and environment.” This is also reflected in the themes of these projects: energy and medical technology. “In view of the relaxations that are increasingly being introduced in the Netherlands,” adds Katja Pahnke, “we are ready to welcome these and also the ongoing projects at our co-location of Eindhoven Engine on the TU/e Campus.”

Giving access to life-long learning for everyone.

Eindhoven Engine (Academy) submitted a challenging project to the PDEng Challenge of TU/e, for the PDEng trainees to get their minds around in a week’s time. The challenge took place from 21 – 25 June. Eindhoven Engine wants to use the output of this Challenge, in order to define, in close cooperation with the Eindhoven Library, a demo project around the library of the future, life-long learning and eradication of low literacy in the region.

Continuous learning hub of the future

The Library’s report: ‘Getting to your core in the heart of the city’ contains a rich palette of options for evolving the Library into a continuous learning hub of the future. Given that this study is based on an extensive survey, there are many ideas of (potential) users, which makes the project a real bottom up experiment of innovation. Today, it seems that there are three significantly developed central ideas to explore further: the role of and the potential for life-long learning for the library; guiding the low-literate into the opportunities and possibilities of life-long learning; the evolution towards a digital library and the inclusion of the ‘ less digital’ in this development. Life-long learning does not only seem to us to be an impactful approach to this project, but it is also close to the heart of our parent institutions (TU/e, Fontys and TNO), and indeed to society.

If we take a closer look at the report, we may be able to identify a few interesting lines of research and development, which Eindhoven Engine would like to deal with in a demo project, in cooperation with the Library and the communities. This PDEng Challenge is intended to create some interesting, creative ideas that might help informing this project.

Accessibility of information

There is a lot of information available (in general, in the world), but how accessible is that information to someone who does not ‘know’, the ‘searcher’ so to speak? Maybe AI (semantics) can do something about this? The speed of (especially social) media also contrasts with the ethical dimension of its use. It is rightly suggested that the library can and should play a trust giving role in this forest of information, fake news, and alternative truth. Also, it could help people on their way from information, to knowledge (what can I do with it) and ultimately to wisdom (was is sensible and has an impact; what is ‘right’ to know or to do). That dimension, from information to knowledge and wisdom, seems to us a useful one to look at how life-long learning can be defined within the current context.

“We are eagerly waiting for the outcome of this Challenge.”

Walter Baets
Eindhoven Engine Academy

Output during PDEng Challenge  

During the PDEng Challenge, a team PDEng trainees gave this topic its full attention and creativity for one week. The output of this week will then be used as input for a series of brainstorm sessions with all stakeholders: library, researchers, communities, low-literate. Next, this learning community will deliver the definition of a demo project of the Eindhoven Engine, in cooperation with the Library. Questions that might be interesting to explore are:

The course that gets you on track in this exponential world

The Academy of Eindhoven Engine has received a grant of €50,000 from Stichting Post-Academisch Technisch Onderwijs (PATO) to develop the course ‘Business Model Innovation in an Exponential World’. The course comes in two variants: one oriented towards flexible, virtual delivery (while still interactive) and one oriented towards a more impactful, face-to-face delivery.

The project is to develop a new and unique (and therefore currently non-existent) training course for post-academic and post-HBO engineers that contributes to becoming more effective as leaders in the (exponential) technology sector. The aim is to share the latest and newest insights on the success of innovation ecosystems, agile innovation and improvements to time to market, bringing technological evolution closer to business practice. The training and its focus on innovation acceleration is relevant to all engineering specializations (or otherwise technology-trained professionals) who have an interest in making more effective use of the available technology. It contributes to an understanding of how to create impactful, scalable and economically-viable solutions based on the potential of exponential technologies, supporting participants to become leaders in their respective fields.

“The training course targets engineers who are currently in practice as well as academics or

researchers with the ambition to create more market impact.”

Walter Baets – Eindhoven Engine Academy

Bridging the gap

The training course aims to bridge the gap between research and the need to bring technology to the market meaningfully. It targets engineers who are currently in practice as well as academics or researchers with the ambition to create more market impact. As Eindhoven Engine – a collaboration between Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Fontys and TNO – is the organizing party and enjoys very good cooperation with industry, we have direct, easy access to the desired population in the Brainport Region. 

Post-academic and post-HBO

We see a few applications of the course being developed, both in Eindhoven Engine itself and for its constituent members (TU/e, Fontys, TNO). Firstly, the training course can be offered by Eindhoven Engine to the post-academic (and post-HBO) community of engineers in order to train them in the latest insights on agile innovation and multidisciplinary applied research. Secondly, we can make the course available to projects that are currently operating within Eindhoven Engine in order to boost (and accelerate) the current innovation approaches. Eventually, we could make the training course available to students (such as PDEng trainees) in order to train them in bridging the gap between their technological expertise and corporate needs.

The course will be constructed in two variants. The first variant will lead to a short course that can be delivered virtually in blocks of five times two hours, with different sessions of group work on an assignment in between. This is a compressed form of the full five-day certification course, which will be the second variant. The short virtual course will start in December 2021. Information about registrations and other details will follow soon. The full five-day course is planned to take place in the first quarter of 2022.

Photos: Bart van Overbeeke

I’m Ralf Zelders, tech-savvy Value Additor, skilled in solving business challenges in the areas of Strategy & Change and (new) Business Development & Innovation with 30+ years of management experience in delivering impactful solutions to challenges in complex and dynamic environments for teams up to C-level management of large corporates.

Over the course of three months, I’ve been supporting Eindhoven Engine’s management – Katja Pahnke (CEO) and Maarten Steinbuch (Scientific Director) – and the team in incorporating and boosting the business innovation perspective of activities at the Engine. The first challenge we explored is the highly successful Eindhoven Engine formula and raising the question of how to sustain and expand funding for the future. The second challenge was how we can incorporate and deepen business model development and innovation earlier in the market readiness levels of projects. And the third was how we can support projects earlier in relation to specific business and market challenges.

The set-up of the Engine formula and the drive and energy the people bring is truly inspiring to me. I value independent thinking in combination with cross-functional and cross-domain team collaboration in order to reach results with an impact. Working pragmatically; hands-on with a ‘can do’ mentality. A great environment with the opportunity to experience and apply my value-adding skills from a business perspective and learn more about the high-tech innovation challenges that the Brainport region and Eindhoven Engine are trying to solve in a shortened timeframe.

If you’d like to know more about my way of working, feel free to contact me: www.linkedin.com/in/ralfzelders

The show is part of the Dutch Technology Week program and is in Dutch

Smart use of technology to boost vitality – Fontys, imec, TNO, Eindhoven University of Technology and Eindhoven Engine cooperate in the FITT and POWErFITTing programmes, forming a strong regional ecosystem. The common goal is to combine their extensive knowledge and experience to develop real-life, innovative and effective solutions to create a vital working environment. New technologies are researched and developed to come up with new technologies that really focus on the working individual and his or her needs.

In this talkshow Maarten Steinbuch (Scientific Director Eindhoven Engine), Steven Vos (professor at Eindhoven University of Technology and Fontys), Sywert Brongersma (Director Strategic Partnerships imec), Marieke van Beurden (Program Director Human Vitality & Technology at Eindhoven University of Technology) and Pieter Jansen (HC Oranje Rood) will share their vision on the future of our way of working and the part that technology plays. We will kick-off the POWErFITTing programme and you can watch live demos of innovative solutions based on smart technologies that are available today.

Eindhoven Engine accelerates innovation in the Brainport region through challenge-based research in its public-private research facility at the TU/e Campus. Teams of our region’s most talented researchers from industry, knowledge institutes and students cooperate in Eindhoven Engine research programs to deliver breakthrough technological solutions.

In the Smart Mobility project the goal is develop new perception technology for next-generation automated driving systems. The project focusses both on sensors, by researching and prototyping new imaging radar systems, and on artificial intelligence, by researching highly-efficient deep binary neural networks that can interpret sensor data. This project is a collaboration of TU/e and NXP and supported by Eindhoven Engine and AI in Motion.

Watch here the broadcast ‘Smart Mobility @Eindhoven Engine‘ recordered during the Dutch Technology Week 2021 and TU/e professor Gijs Dubbelman will explain how this particular project @Eindhoven Engine accelerates innovation.