Eindhoven Engine, the innovation accelerator of the Brainport region, is launching seven new innovation projects. These projects in the fields of energy, health and smart mobility will undertake research in the coming years with a total budget of almost 17 million euros, to which Eindhoven Engine is contributing a total of over 2.4 million euros. The investment for the Eindhoven Engine OpenCall 2022 comes from the Brainport Region Deal.

The seven projects can bring their innovations to market faster by continuing their research within Eindhoven Engine, collaborating on the Eindhoven Engine co-location on the TU/e campus, and building the internal community together. The new projects have the time until 2025 to use the impetus from Eindhoven Engine to further develop their innovations.

Ella Hueting, Chair of Advisory Board Eindhoven Engine

“We have received iconic project proposals that meet the call’s stringent requirements and are of high quality. In addition, I also see a balanced mix of partners representing the chain. In addition to knowledge institutions, including our shareholders Fontys, TNO and Eindhoven University of Technology, we also welcome new partners from industry and other education and research institutions in very diverse consortia.”

AUXSTENT

Unlocking mechanical limitations of synthetic heart stents with auxetic, fiber tubular scaffolds

In the fight against cardiovascular disease, stents and grafts are implanted in patients to support or repair damaged or high-risk vessels. These stents and grafts provide robust mechanical support, but do not provide tissue repair. It would be better if such implants actively promoted tissue repair and regeneration over time. The AUXSTENT project addresses these challenges and is already working on 3D-printable and bioresorbable stents that encourage and stimulate regeneration. At Eindhoven Engine, AUXSTENT will take the next step: developing a functional prototype. In this project, the focus is on combining the functional design of these stents with available engineering and materials knowledge.

Partners: Fillip Studios, TU/e

CoLLidE

Co-creation in Living Labs as impact Engine. Living labs as catalysts for circular societal impact

The CoLLidE project focuses on the market introduction of reusable food packaging. The Circulware system, developed by project partner Haval, replaces single-use food packaging with reusable and recyclable, bio-based packaging and will be applied in a living lab in this project. This will enable the use of the new packaging to be investigated from a technical, economic and social perspective. In the living lab, entrepreneurs, students, researchers, public authorities and companies will collaborate and learn together. The living lab will act as a catalyst for circular societal impact and will also investigate how a behavioral change towards food packaging can be achieved.

Partners: Fontys, Haval, Innovatiehuis de Peel, VNO-NCW, Midpoint Brabant, Avans

Direct Air Capture 2.0

Carbyon is developing technology to capture CO₂ directly from ambient air (Direct Air Capture, DAC). The captured CO₂ can be converted into a renewable carbon source in various ways. Net-zero solutions are made possible by using this CO₂ in processes and products, such as in greenhouses to improve crop growth or for the production of renewable synthetic fuels (e.g., for aviation). Net-zero solutions involve the permanent storage of CO₂ underground, for example in depleted gas fields.

During the previous Eindhoven Engine project (OpenCall 2020), Carbyon achieved breakthrough results in proving the working principles of the key components of Carbyon’s DAC solution. The current project (OpenCall 2022) aims to further develop this innovative technology and its key factors on an industrial scale.
Partners: Carbyon, TU/e, DIFFER

DynaPopeX

The concentration of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter is still too high in the Netherlands according to WHO guideline values in 2021. In the Eindhoven region, several technical developments and research and innovation initiatives have been started in this field. As a result, a lot of information on population dynamics, such as commuting traffic and air pollution, is readily available. In DynaPopeX, this information is brought together for the first time and visualization techniques can be used to make connections to the sources of air pollution. The combination of data, location and human movements in Eindhoven makes it possible to take tangible measures to reduce the exposure of people on the street to harmful particulate matter and limit possible harm to health.

Partners: TNO, ZichtopData

PowerLift

In the Powerlift innovation project, research is being done on a sustainable battery for the electric aviation industry (eFlight). This battery not only has a long lifetime but can store an extraordinary amount of energy and delivers a lot of energy when used. Within Eindhoven Engine, PowerLift will further develop this technology into a standardized platform for the production of customized eFlight batteries.

Partners: LeydenJar Technologies B.V., Titan Batteries B.V., Wingtra AG

Smart Heat Shed

The Smart Heat Shed (smart heat storage) project addresses the rapid energy transition by combining two international breakthrough technologies, a heat façade and a heat battery. The heat facade (developed by TNO-Emergo spin-off Calosol) is an innovative, aesthetically versatile solar thermal facade collector, which effectively harvests solar energy at low outdoor temperatures. The heat battery (developed by the TNO-TU/e spin-off Cellcius) is the first completely loss-free heat storage solution. The latter is also 10x cheaper than electrical storage and much more compact than water or phase transition materials (PCM).

Partners: Cellcius, Emergo, TBRM, TNO, TU/e

WECARE

Currently, there are 55 million people worldwide with dementia. This number is expected to rise to 78 million by 2030 and 138 million by 2050 according to the WHO. There is currently no medical solution for dementia. In addition, there is a shortage of caregivers. This is putting the healthcare system under pressure. Technology should and can provide the support needed for dementia sufferers and their caregivers.

The WECARE project focuses on extending human care by applying the Warm Technology concept to interactive agents, such as chatbots and companion robots. Warm Technology ensures that this technology is made accessible and appropriate for the environment of people with dementia and their caregivers, thereby also taking this environment into account. In this project, work is being done to develop more advanced behaviors and representations in interactive agents.

Partners: TU/e, Alzheimer Netherlands, Fontys, SARA Robotics, Tinybots

Accelerating at the Eindhoven Engine co-location

In the Eindhoven Engine OpenCall 2022, projects were again invited to come up with innovation proposals that contribute to solving societal challenges. This time a team of independent experts selected the projects on the basis of predefined criteria.

“I am extremely satisfied with the result. The project proposals are of very high quality,” says Maarten Steinbuch, scientific director Eindhoven Engine. “Two current Eindhoven Engine projects, Carbyon and iHeat@Home, have even successfully submitted a proposal for a follow-up project. These projects, which are currently still in the startup phase, will grow into impactful businesses with the help of the Eindhoven Engine ecosystem.” Katja Pahnke adds: “This call once again confirms that there are plenty of technical innovations with societal impact emerging from the region. Eindhoven Engine’s co-location and cross-sector collaborations offer project partners and their innovations the place to get to market faster and more successfully.”

Funding for the 2022 OpenCall comes from the final Brainport RegioDeal. Eindhoven Engine is working hard on a follow-up to the OpenCall.

Other OpenCalls

Eindhoven Engine welcomes four new innovation projects valued at over 11 million euros

29 June 2021

Eindhoven Engine, the accelerator for innovation projects, welcomes four projects with a focus on energy and health technology.

Read more

Eindhoven Engine gives green light to new innovation projects collectively worth €16.8 million

8 July 2020

With an investment of over €2.2 million, various challenging, innovative projects with potential impacts on society and the economy are being given space within Eindhoven Engine.

Read more

By carrying out their research under the same roof at the Eindhoven Engine co-location, the two projects have found each other, got connected and have been able to make a terrific crossover.

The right candidate

The SmartMan project, a consortium of Eindhoven Engine, Fontys, TNO and Brainport Industries Campus, aims to improve factory efficiency by optimizing production processes with the support of HBO students through an assignment or internship at SMEs. Carbyon was searching for a student who would be able to help them with exactly that. Moudar Al Abdullah was the right candidate from the start. Using the competencies built up in the mechatronics curriculum, Moudar will work on the design of the sorbent-coating process of Carbyon’s equipment. Carbyon develops systems to extract CO₂ from the air. By capturing CO₂ from the atmosphere and storing it in empty gas fields under the sea, Carbyon contributes to the CO₂ reduction program.

It is the ambition of the two projects to extend their collaboration with multiple project activities in the different phases of the students study time at Fontys. An ambition that we fully support and that fits the DNA of Eindhoven Engine.

We wish Moudar good luck with his internship!

More information

• www.carbyon.com
• www.fontys.nl/smartman

The Emergence Lab philosophy is all about the wider prosperity of our Smart Society. After all, everyone should be able to be part of it! Using ‘Smart Society’ as an umbrella, we work on impactful themes such as (1) Inclusiveness, (2) Quality of Life and (3) Future of work. These are themes that affect us all. Eindhoven Engine works together with the ecosystem on these themes in projects where the power lies in the connection. We work with each other, together. The Emergence Lab projects really bring people, society, technology and wicked problems together. As a project leader I like to bring these ideas to life and implement them together with the entire community.

In addition, I am responsible for The Entrepreneurial Lab of TMC where I stimulate and facilitate innovation projects in which we develop technology-based solutions that solve real problems and contribute to tackling societal challenges. You may go faster on your own but you come further together.

Innovation enthusiast

I am an innovation enthusiast who organizes, connects and loves to build bridges. I develop forward-looking strategies, particularly at the intersections of technology, people, entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. I enjoy developing business from ideas. I also marvel at technology and human interaction, and believe that people make innovation possible. I enjoy building ecosystems with stakeholders and working towards a better world for tomorrow.

” I develop forward-looking strategies, particularly at the intersections of technology, people, entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. I enjoy developing business from ideas. “

Lotte Geertsen, project leader Emergence Lab at Eindhoven Engine

Furthermore, I am active as a Mentor at Female Tech Heroes and as co-founder of Female Founders Brabant. Besides all this, I am the mother of Mats (18 months) together with my boyfriend, Steven, and we live in Tilburg. In my spare time I love to be amongst people: my family, friends and as Burgundian Brabanders we get together with some scrumptious food and drinks.

A report that looks back on four years of Regio Deal Brainport Eindhoven. A period in which Brainport Eindhoven succeeded in developing 26 ambitious projects with a combined value of more than 370 million euros and providing them with co-financing. With the Region Deal, Brainport Eindhoven gives an enormous boost to the level of facilities, attracting and retaining talent and new social innovations that are significant for the region and far beyond.

Now 19 projects have been started within the Eindhoven Engine. Together they ensure an innovation acceleration in the Brainport region in the field of energy, mobility and healthcare among others. More than 70 partners and more than 380 involved researchers, students and employees from the business community have now linked to Eindhoven Engine.

• Read more about the Progress Report Regio Deal Brainport Eindhoven (Dutch)
• Read more about Regio Deal Brianport Eindhoven (Dutch)

Brainport Eindhoven is a top technology region that is known for its unprecedented innovative strength. In this way Brainport contribute to solving the social challenges of tomorrow. To maintain this strength, the central government and the region jointly invested 370 million euros from the Brainport Eindhoven Region Deal. By supporting 26 projects, like Eindhoven Engine, the Regio Deal gave and continues to give the region an enormous boost.

Eindhoven Engine News – February edition 2022

For Eindhoven Engine, 2022 has been kickstarted with the new name for our co-location: Disruptor. Disruptor fits Eindhoven Engine and the other tenants perfectly as we’re all working on innovations that will make a difference to industry and society!

In April, we will broaden our portfolio by adding new projects from the OpenCall 2022. Together with the new and ongoing projects, we will have more impact and cross-over innovations. Other interesting news to share with you includes:

• The insights of almost-retired Fontys Liaison Manager Kees Adriaanse. He looks back on a variety of achievements at Eindhoven Engine, as well as the wicked challenges he’d like to see solved.
• Developments in Eindhoven Engine projects: the NEON EE project addressing societal challenges and the next phase in the Smart Mobility project.
• The first pilot of the Business Model Innovation in an Exponential World course for the NEON EE project.
• Our societal impact by committing to reusable isolation gowns and durable mouth-nose facemasks in the Netherlands.
• Building the community from the viewpoint of PDEng trainee Anand Thamban.

“I’ve played an active role in Eindhoven Engine by making the right connections between my Fontys colleagues and the members of the Eindhoven Engine community. I inform my colleagues of interesting subjects so that they can connect or write a proposal for a call. You could call me an ‘in-between’.”

After many years at Fontys University of Applied Science and three years as their liaison manager in Eindhoven Engine, Kees Adriaanse is stepping away from both organizations. How has the Engine changed during this time and what are his hopes for his successor? Kees looks back on a variety of achievements, as well as the wicked challenges he’d like to see solved.

Back to the start

As one of the three Eindhoven Engine stakeholders (alongside TNO and Eindhoven University of Technology), the main benefit for Fontys is increased collaboration with partners in both industry and academia – something which Kees has also shaped by bringing together research groups and students in relevant projects. He also emphasizes the unique nature of collaboration within the Engine as a major advantage: “The most important aspect is co-creation. It’s very important that people from different projects can meet each other at the coffee corners to inspire each other. In the near future, I hope that the coffee corner will be the boardroom of Eindhoven Engine!”

“The most important aspect is co-creation. It’s very important that people from different projects can meet each other at the coffee corners to inspire each other.”

Kees Adriaanse
Fontys Liaison Manager

Regarding changes over the last few years, Kees also notes that Eindhoven Engine was initially an organization with low TRL projects and few students. “I’m proud that we’re getting more students in most of the projects,” he says, pointing to SmartMan as an example of the intersection between academia and SMEs. “Compared to my dreams at the beginning of Eindhoven Engine, we went much further than I thought was possible and have achieved a lot in these last three years.”

Reaching all parts of society

As for the future, Eindhoven Engine’s focus in increasingly turning to societal problems and the use of technology in areas such as health, energy and agri-food. “I think it will be important to get even more new research areas,” Kees suggests. “For example, there are many people who learned to read and write at school but no longer really know how to do either. How can we help these people? That’s a dream for me: that Eindhoven Engine projects can help low-literate people or people without good mobility, for instance.” Such societal challenges need to be tackled and give Eindhoven Engine the opportunity to showcase how we co-create and come to meaningful innovation. One example of such a project in the Brainport region is Eindhoven Engine’s work with Eindhoven Library on a technical solution to improve the connection between low-literates and society.

Despite reaching retirement age, this isn’t quite the end of Kees’ career. “For three days a week, I’ll go back to where I started as a physics teacher many years ago. That’s because physics is a nice discipline and I want to spend the last years of my working experience in a secondary school,” he concludes. “I want to say one more thing to my successor: make project teams not only with people from universities and polytechnicals but also with more surprising groups of people, like schoolchildren, people of 70 or 80 years old or actors and painters. Of course, it’s important to have people with high qualifications on technical subjects. But people from other parts of society can give you another view. Inclusivity means making sure that not only highly educated people benefit from the Brainport region but also the people living here, and we can help with that.”

NEON develops integral agent-based models (AKA digital twins) of the energy and mobility transition. These models can take knowledge from many disciplines and use this to design realistic and cost-effective pathways towards a low-carbon future.

Making the leap

Through this Eindhoven Engine project called NEON EE, these models will make the leap from technology readiness level 4 to 7 and from societal readiness level 3 to 6. Policy makers, businesses, and other societal stakeholders will find that it’s possible to quickly apply the open-source NEON tooling to their own region and business case. NEON EE will also organize a series of workshops and serious games at the Eindhoven Engine with policy makers and business leaders. NEON EE adds interaction design specialists and student teams from Fontys to the NEON consortium.

The tooling will become even more interactive and engaging with a format to apply it in multi-stakeholder workshops that increase system thinking and mutual understanding. In this way NEON EE will accelerate the transition to a sustainable future for the Brainport region and beyond.

OpenCall 2021 project

On 29 June 2021, the NEON EE project joined Eindhoven Engine as one of the four OpenCall 2021 projects. Soon, NEON EE had moved into the co-location (Disruptor building) of Eindhoven Engine and started to accelerate its research together with the other Engine projects while playing an active role in the Eindhoven Engine Community.

If you would like to stay informed on NEON, you can subscribe to their newsletter by sending an email to Mixel Kiemen (m.kiemen@tue.nl). You can also contact Mixel with any questions.

Hans, PhD candidate in the POWEr FITTing project, researches the improvement of a healthier and active environment for people in (home) offices. By the combination of data acquisition, integration and application for the validation and acceleration of user-oriented solutions, Hans is optimizing the relationship between vitality and the (home) office environment. Check out the video how Hans does these measurements with Sensorbadge and StimuLight!

Contact: Marieke van Beurden @ m.v.beurden@tue.nl

Also, a few new students started in the office team to help us with increasing organized serendipity. And it’s not just about looking at how to create serendipity: we also have reinforcements – again in the form of students – in the Emergence Lab projects ‘Low Literacy’ and ‘Future of Work’ so that we can actually experience this serendipity!

As for now, the upcoming period looks promising from a COVID perspective and we hope to see you soon at one of the upcoming events in DISRUPTOR to further DISRUPT!

PDEng trainee Anand Thamban

Alongside students at Eindhoven Engine, we have a group of PhD candidates and PDEng trainees working on one of the Eindhoven Engine projects. One of them is Anand Thamban.

Hi, my name is Anand and I’m a PDEng trainee in the Smart Buildings and Cities program. My PDEng project is about the development of a fault detection and diagnosis tool for cooling systems in buildings and I am working with Kropman Installatietechniek. My project is funded and supported by Eindhoven Engine under the main project ‘CM-HVAC-FDD’. By being part of Eindhoven Engine, I get to interact with researchers and students from various other projects where there is active knowledge sharing and learning, especially in the field of energy efficiency and human comfort. The networking with other project members and start-ups helps in expanding my professional outreach, which I find to be a very valuable advantage while working within Eindhoven Engine. It would be really nice to interact with more people from other projects so that we can share our experiences with each other, get some ideas and gain some knowledge.