Vidi grants for three UT scientists

Three UT scientists will receive a ‘Vidi’ grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO): Alexander van Deursen, Saskia Nagel and David Marpaung.

Within the Veni, Vidi, Vici scheme of NWO, the Vidi grants are meant for experienced researchers. With up to 800,000 euros for five years, scientists can form a research group of their own, to work on a new line of research. In this year's round, NWO received 590 proposals, of which 89 are granted.

Internet of Things for everyone

Alexander van Deursen (Communication Science) will do research on Internet of Things (IoT), in particular on the behavior and the skills we need for that. Will IoT cause another ‘digital divide’ in society and what can we do to prevent this from happening? Van Deursen will be looking at IoT from an individual and social-contextual perspective.

Are we techno sapiens?

Saskia Nagel (Philosophy) is fascinated by the relation of humans and technology. Technologies have become an inseparable part of our life. Some of the them can be seen as extensions of our mind, outside the body. Our close relation to technology gives rise to questions about who we are and who we want to be. Nagel’s research will focus on both the positive and negative aspects of these close human-technology-relations; she will develop new ways of evaluating them.

Light and sound in new signal processor

David Marpaung (Nanophotonics) will develop a new technology for processing signals in which light interacts with 'hypersound'. He wants to do this using a new Brillouin processor, to be built in the MESA+ NanoLab. As this processor will help using the optical information spectrum to the full, it will be an important component in future wireless and optical networks. David did his PhD at the University of Twente, worked at the University of Sydney for the past years and returns to Twente now for starting his new project within the Laser Physics and Nonlinear Optics group (MESA+).

For more information, check NWO's press release.