TU Delft adds eight AI labs, bringing its cross-faculty total to 24

Delft University of Technology announced on November 17, 2021, that it would add eight new TU Delft AI Labs to the 16 already operating, bringing the total to 24. Recruitment of 32 doctoral candidates for the new labs was scheduled to begin in mid-December 2021, with the labs starting work in March 2022.

Each lab brings together specialists in AI methods and experts from an application field, and is made up of two lab directors and four PhD students. The doctoral contracts run for five years, one of which is devoted to providing additional education. The new labs cover topics including sustainable built environments, citizen deliberation, biomedical imaging, bio-inspired drones, low-power computing for health care, sensor fusion and explainable digital twins for cities. The university said around 150 academics from its eight faculties would be active in the labs by March 2022.

TU Delft has made more than €6 million a year available for the program, which gives researchers five years of start-up funding to build emerging research areas into established disciplines. Alongside research, the labs are expected to contribute to teaching in AI, data and digitalization, and the university said the first 16 labs had already helped expand its teaching capacity in the field.