Between pushing forward and resting
Work has been intense in these past months. I am throwing spaghetti to the wall and applying for every possible type of funding - I need at least one, and ideally two, big projects to get funded so that I…
Explorations in committee organization
I have reflected in the past on how my roles in committees have changed over time - all in line with me rolling off from a leadership position for the first time. Time flies - that is for sure. It…
Changing roles in committees
My roles in technical committees have changed quite some over the past years: Visitor: I started attending committee meetings as a visitor. Associate member (or Friend): As most technical committees have tiers in membership, I started as an associate member…
Think day on aligning work with university vision
When I did my University Teaching Qualification, we briefly looked at the vision of TU Delft on education. Since then, I have wanted to take a deeper dive into the vision and mission of the university, and reflect on what…
GenAI now
I thought we had gotten into calmer waters with generative AI, but DeepSeek, the plunge of Nvidia stock, and the launch of o-3 mini showed me that I was very wrong. And yet - I feel a certain fatigue, a…
Broadly contributing
In the past, my research lines were very well defined. I started with the shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs under concentrated loads. Gradually, I expanded to other shear problems, punching, torsion, and assessment of reinforced concrete slab bridges. Then,…
How my work has changed
Every now and then, I take a look back on what my work weeks used to look like, and what they look like now. And now is a moment in my career in which I've been a full professor in…
PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to prepare your PhD candidates for their defense
This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those…
Offboarding PhD candidates
I have written about the procedures I have for onboarding PhD candidates and postdocs, but it recently became clear to me that I also need to think about my procedures for offboarding. So, I sat down to see what are…
Aligning research projects to scale up
I have recently been applying to more calls for proposals than in the past - partially because I am developing a new research line in Ecuador, and I can use all the financial contributions to buy the necessary equipment. For…