Chip Technology

Walk into a church on a clear day, and you can feel the light change. Reds seem to glow from within, yellows land softly on stone, blues deepen the air. It looks like pure artistry, but a lot of that effect comes from something the makers never saw directly: nanoscale structure inside the glass. Himadri Sahoo, a postdoctoral researcher in the Adaptive Quantum Optics group, takes us from coloured church windows to modern photonic chips, showing how old ideas about light are still used in cutting-edge research.

As a small country, the Netherlands has historically always opened itself up to the rest of the world. In that respect, we are living in turbulent times. Trade wars between the United States, the European Union and China are creating uncertainty in both financial and goods markets. The war in Ukraine has exposed the fragility of our global supply chains. And the conflict in Gaza has revealed deep divisions within Europe. What lies ahead for the Netherlands in the coming years? We discuss the current state of affairs and the geopolitical future with Melle Scholten, political economist affiliated with the Public Administration programme at the University of Twente.

Imagine you are sitting in a self-driving car. Suddenly, someone runs across the street. In a fraction of a second, the car decides to brake. How does it do that so quickly? And could it do so even faster or with less energy, especially now that self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles rely heavily on cameras, smart sensors and AI systems?

Artificial Intelligence keeps growing more powerful and more energy-hungry. Could the human brain inspire a solution? In a “Universiteit van Nederland” podcast, Full Professor of Nano Electronics Wilfred van der Wiel explores whether brain-inspired hardware might change the game.

From phones, cars, and watches to bridges and greenhouses: chips are everywhere. But what if they never needed a battery again? At the University of Twente, Assistant Professor Harijot Singh Bindra, an expert in integrated circuit design, is pushing chip technology to new limits, making it smarter, more powerful and far more sustainable.